The New Normal
by Helltanz98
Summary: Normal days are gone for good. "This is the new normal it started that first day in front of the school when you saw that zombie first bite that teacher. All we can do, and need to do now is keep surviving." I said as we looked out over the city. It'd only been a day since that incident, and the only way we could keep making a difference was by surviving.
1. Chapter 1 Last Day of Normal

Last Day of Normal

Helltanz's notes: I started this while MP was on hiatus. It began initially out of a thought exercise on another forum. So before we start this story is a result of getting prompted to write based on a scenario posited on another forum. Just so thats clear. The scenario in question was being stuck in HSoD (which at the time I hadn't read, and knew very little about other than it involved a zombie apocalypse) and asked what would you pack if you had a vehicle choice (there were three base options given a humvee, an APC, and a Huey), and 5 duffle bags to pack in plus your choice of two guns (with ammo packed in the back of your vehicle). Thats what the scenario was So in a way you can see this as a self insert.

So this new fic, and its a little different than my usual fare. Its going to be largely told in first person (unless I go back and reformat it into my usual Omniscient 3rd Person point of view). I don't really know how keen I am on doing this in first person. If you want to see my attempt at original zombie apocalypse, check in sometime on my fictionpress account (same pen name) and see how you like ADZ.

- divider-

Disclaimer: I do not own High School of the Dead. This particular bit of writing is the result of a prompt on another website, and thus may also borrow elements from other works. At the time of my writing this disclaimer this is not a crossover. Later down the road depending on what direction this takes it might develop into one, and it might not.

-scene break-

If I'd have known yesterday would have been the last normal day of my life I might have gone out and enjoyed myself more. It was supposed to be just another hypothetical situation. I wasn't actually supposed to end up, somehow, in the middle of the day in somewhere that was very clearly not my home town... or anywhere that I recognized for that matter. I also shouldn't have been loaded down like I was.

I might have taken the time to really look around, definitely would have in any other situation, had it not been for what I had termed at one point in discussion as a [an almost] 'ideal choice for zombie survival vehicle' [of the options available]... and five duffle bags to the side of it. A quick check of one of the bags showed a familiar well worn FAL para rifle inside it.

That was about when this little 'hypothetical discussion' came back to me. I took a half step. Yeah either this was a hellaciously realistic dream or this was going to be all kinds of fucked up. The vehicle in question was the ASLAV 25. It was basically the Aussie version, with appropriate tweaks to handle their needs, of the Corp's LAV 25. In short it could seat nine people, and was thirteen odd tons of armor and guns. I was too busy poking through the bags, and trying to figure out what to do with it all when the screaming started. It took me a good minute to filter through the Japanese. At this point I wasn't even questioning why I'd suddenly become, at least semi, fluent in a language my grasp on had always been broken, at best, on.

So in ten minutes, and as soon as I peaked around the corner, I'd figured out a few very important things. The first obviously was I was stuck, for the forseeable future, in Japan, and I had already seem my first zombie... Definitely a zombie given the mass of ruptured tissue and nasty gash on the arm from probably getting popped by a low speed collision with a car's grill. There were four people on the other side of the gate, and a zombie on the other side, just one, but that was all it had taken.

The man, whose name I would later learn was Teshima, had stuck his hand through the gate and grabbed the zombie on the other side. As a result he got bit, and well it spiraled from there. Of the four teachers who had come to the gate, Teshima and the female teacher got turned flat out, and well the other two teachers panicked but they'd probably gotten bit as well. That was the problem they'd run off... no doubt to call the police about the gun wielding Gaijin than the zombies, because really... not that it mattered. The gate was secure I pulled the nine millimeter handgun from its drop leg holster leveled and squeezed. At condition zero the gun discharged.

The spent brass rolled along the ground and ended a few feet away from what was I guess now my amphibious vehicle. The zombie who had been named Teshima slammed futilely against the gate, as did the other one. Noise, obviously but I couldn't tell if they could actually see me. I glanced back at the other corpse, which wasn't moving, which I took to be a good sign. Two more pieces of brass went across the black top.

At least the one good thing about this was for planning a hypothetical scenario I had a lot of stuff of course most of my plans had dealt with being stuck somewhere in the states. I hadn't really been prepared for actually having to work off my hypothetical response in some city in Japan that I knew next to nothing about. It didn't give me a whole lot of options. I bent down, pulled a folding knife out of my pocket, and cut the identification tags off my duffle bags, stuffing them in my interior pocket of the jacket I was wearing.

I stood back up and eyed the dead zombies on the ground. One outside, and two inside the gate. I didn't pretend to be an expert on schools but this one was big. It might not have been the brightest decision, but after a moment of hemming and hawwing I started hefting the dufflebags up onto the top of the ASLAV. I didn't see any other zombies coming, and there had to be a way to open the gate from the inside, so the best idea I had was to hop it and figure it out.

Actually clambering over the gate was a bit more difficult. Then again I probably should have tossed my back pack over first, instead of climbing over. I'd stowed most of my, what I was terming, extra miscelaneous gear in, or on the turret of, the ASLAV. It took longer than I expected to tell the truth, and it was precious time I wasn't really sure I had to waste. In hindsight he recalled that simply ramming the gate might have been a better idea. Closing the gate was a lot easier, of course by the time all that was done their was more screaming and shouting coming in from the school.

There were probably two zombie teachers, plus whomever they've bit. I don't even know what I'm doing, because there is a small rational part telling me I'm being a moron. The ASLAV's rear compartment was, as I had noted, loaded with 308 and 9mm ammo, and I'd found the five extra large duffle bags worth of supplies that I'd painstaking planned out...

So thus here I was with that, and I'm doing this stupid thing and rushing in. I don't know anything about the building I'm going into, just like I don't know anything about the city I was in.

In the, what should have stayed, hypothetical you got a choice of a vehicle, two guns with ammo for them filling the vehicle, and five bags you could back with whatever for supplies. Of the two guns I'd picked I'd left the rifle in the ASLAV.

The second gun I'd pickedwas an HK MP5K-PDW. I considered it a fairly ideal choice. Its side folding stock already set, and the gun itself set on its sling it was just waiting to be used. The zombies were in the school, and that was the problem I was facing.

From the screaming and shouting, and the general panic that seemed to be setting in I could figure that the zombies were already in the school. One kid had already ran down the stairs, and out the building, and there were a couple more running. Without an idea about the layout of the place I had no idea what that meant, which I found myself hauling another student up to his feet.

People in a panic don't tend to notice a whole lot. Even if there weren't a whole lot of people running, they were too scared to notice much else beside what was right in front of them. They also didn't care if they ran anyone over. A panicked group of people was not something you wanted to stand in front of. Trampling was not a quick death normally.

I really needed to figure out where to go, and well, the nurses office was probably the best place to start. I could have just ran through looking for zombies to kill, but even at that moment I knew that was stupid. Running inside the building might have been impulsive, but I couldn't think of anything better at least trying.

-scene break-

The kid hadn't really known much, and there hadn't been much I could tell him. He'd probably been a freshman, or a sophmore. I didn't even know where to tell him to run to. The only good advice I was able to give was to find somewhere he could barricade himself in and be quiet. I probably should have told him to get a baseball bat or something to. After that I moved. The zed responded to noise, and if I wasn't careful they'd probably focus in on my gunshots because I was probably making a lot of noise, even relatively to the panicing students, as a I made my way through the halls of the school. The MP5K was just heavy enough that recoil wasn't a problem, but with a full set of gear I kind of needed to pace my breathing just in case I did suddenly need to run like hell. Still the undead were THE issue, and even being reasonably quiet the gunshots were still going to make plenty of noise, still every little bit helped I supposed. On the plus side the zombies were pretty much limitted in numbers.

I'd put together a semi clear picture of what must have happened. Shooting Zombie Teshima, and the ping poing club's advisor, as I found out later, had probably meant there had only been two. At least one of them had run into the reception, or whatever, and if I was to guess the other had run to warn, or get another teacher. One of them had gotten bit on the arm or at least that was my guess from the bloodstain on the hall's wall.

Obviously at some point he must have bit another teacher, or student and that'd spread to the floor in question.

Given that it had taken me a couple minutes to hop the fence, another couple to get the gate open, and then time to drive the ASLAV in, park it out of sight, and close the gate. Less than an hour obviously so I, it wasn't like I had colossally screwed up. The school wasn't lost, yet, but it was big. There was the chance Zombies had gotten loose in multiple buildings... that would be a mess.

I stopped, looked around, and wondered, again, just what I was doing. If the zombies were loose, and with as much shooting as I'd done that was clearly the case I needed to find somebody who knew the town and get out of here. Telling as many people to hole up somewhere safe would only accomplish so much.

The damn first floor of the school seemed pretty much gone. I paused there was a heavy thump from outside the door as I made my way up the stairs. At least someone was fighting back. I shouldered the submachine gun. I knew it was still on semi auto, but I checked anyway. Obviously wasting ammo might not have been that big of a concern but noise and accuracy were. An entire classroom worth of Zed would eat me alive in this much tight space so I couldn't afford to get boxed in. I caught my first sights as I entered the second floor hallway.

It was certainly apparent the zombies spread at a geometric rate. That being obvious there also weren't that many up here. I slotted the fresh magazine into the HK. Six, seven zed at least maybe more in one, or more, of the rooms. Once I'd started shooting they'd probably prioritize me. I probably also hadn't cleared all the ones on the ground floor, that was another thing to consider. Either way there wasn't much choice, sure I'd packed plenty of blades, in my bags mainly, but I'd prefer to avoid such close encounters.

Busujima Saeko, whose name I found out after I stopped shooting, had heard the gun shots before ever seeing me. You'd have to have been deaf not to. I hadn't bothered using the suppressor. I was planning to save it, and the limited subsonic ammo I had for when I needed it. At the same time I didn't want to start shooting with her in close proximity.

Ooh this was stupid, less stupid than deciding to rush into the school I knew zombies were in but the point stood. "Hey get into a room without zombies," At least that was what I was hoping I had said in Japanese. I turned the gun towards the zeds near window and squeezed, three rounds. That was bad a major violation of the gun safety that had been beaten into my head, but there hadn't been much choice.

At least I had the zombies attention. I went for the ones away from her, hopefully she'd do the smart thing and stay out of the way. I was angling my fire so any stray shots would still go out a window, but even so I wouldn't have that option for long. Still the remaining four zombies wasn't much, not at this range, but that wasn't saying much.

I'd probably drastically underestimated the spread. I could see ones walking across the courtyard no doubt attracted by the multiple gunshots. I doubled tapped the last zombie, and then reloaded, "Uh hi," I could reload a fully empty pair magazines in two or so minutes because I hadn't fully expended them I just needed a minute to sit down. I checked my watch, I'd started it after I'd seen the first zombie. 1 hour 15 minutes. I looked back to the courtyard, what was I gonna say you're good at using that stick to wail on zombies I have this bag full of nice toys out on my armored vehicle... yeah right talk about stupid introductions. "Might want to keep moving, there are a lot more of those things than I figured."

I hadn't realized, comprehended that this was such a big school. I had visibly seen that it was large, but I guess just seeing wasn't enough. One of the zombies, just one was needed to spread it into one of the other building... damn it all. I needed to find that quiet place. What I needed to go ahead an reload those magazines.

Introductions turned out to be a simple affair. The outbreak of the zombie apocalypse didn't really give you time for talking about what you liked to do on Sundays or whatever. I'd brought pretty much everything I could think of, and most of it I'd left strapped to the external cargo racks on the turret. I looked around, "So to the nurse's office?"

"This way," She gestured, and I nodded casting a glance towards the freshly barricaded stairs that lead back down to the first floor before following her towards the nurse's office. Neither of us had said why we were going there, and really it could have been anything. If she hadn't demonstrated how good she was with the wooden sword she had I'd have been inclined to try and offer her some other weapon.

I was telling myself I was going to the nurse's station because this would probably be the only option to grab as much medical supplies as possible soon given that hospitals and pharmacies would be over run quickly... the school certainly seemed to be going that way quickly enough. I kind of doubted though she had the same idea. It wasn't like I was going to ask though.

Killing the zombies on the second floor seemed to have stopped the spread... for the moment at least of course that didn't mean much what with the zeds crawling around the ground floor, and probably in the other buildings. I looked back down at the H&K a little paranoid tic just checking over it again. I hadn't stopped the infestation, and I stopped, "Does the school have a PA system?" It was a stupid question of course it did, but the real question, and I didn't even know why I was asking, was could it be used.

If an armed contingent, even maybe just baseball bats and sticks, of students could barricade themselves safely on the upper floors... if they could do that and the rest of the zombies were lured back to the ground floor then the school might be able to be salvaged. It was a big if... oh certainly I could probably provoke the zombies to chasing, following the sound of the gunshots, but expecting these people to get organized without much prompting... that was the if that was the question. The school was gated it was a good first defense, and it was multi storied, and maybe they could make it, it was a better chance than leaving without saying anything at all.

I tried to explain it, and it might work. Might, and that was better than no chance at all. Maybe that was all that I need to do, because I wasn't going to stay here. I glanced at Saeko, I wondered if she actually had a plan. In truth I should have had a better plan. I was the one who had gotten the for warning, and the time to prepare, and dropped smack in the middle of Japan with all my supplies.

I hadn't been planning on Japan though. All the plans I had mainly revolved on first hand experience off my surroundings. Survive was the name of the game... the game. I glanced back at my watch. This was not a good start. It was less than an hour and a half in and I was... Adapt and overcome, but first improvise. So I guess that was precisely what I needed to do, improvise with what I had and adapt being in Japan as opposed to America.

True things were different than I'd planned but I still had my supplies. Improvise long enough to adapt to the change and then... I kept walking even as I glanced out the window. I should have brought the rifles. Making the shot to the ground with the nine millimeter, making the head shot reliably totally not something that was going to happen. I shook my head, should have brought the rifle. Shooting something that was on the ground not going to work well, not from this angle.

I half looked around. Maybe the school could be salvaged, maybe not. I wasn't going to stay here though, "so whats your plan?"

"The nurse has access to a car," She said after a minute, "and she's an adult who'll know how to drive so," Her plan was to get with the Nurse and get out of the area, made sense.

Right Japan, like Europe wasn't like the states when it came to driving laws. These people didn't get their license as early as in the states. I made a half grunt, probably rude sounding, but in the situation she didn't comment on it, "Well that is an option I guess." I wasn't going to volunteer that I had wheels already. Another half grunt, and looked towards the sign.

"What about you... you're prepared." That would totally have come off sounding accusatory in any Indo European language. Hell it sound close enough to a compliment in Japanese except for in this case prepared meant ready for the end of civilization.

I shook my head side to side just a little in a kind of yeah well gesture. It was a distinctly western gesture, or at least as far as I'd guess it was. Then again she seemed to understand well enough. I checked my watch again, damn I was getting paranoid about doing that. "We need to hurry." I said tapping the digital display.

She nodded in response, and let my lack of a response pass. I looked down the hallway. A sign read Nurse on it, well there it was I adjusted the position of the stock where it was resting against my shoulder. Saeko didn't need to make such adjustments with her wooden sword. Not that there looked like there were any more zombies-

A scream from inside cut that line of thinking off. The zombie was already dead when we got inside the office. It'd just been one, and the sophmore had apparently busted an IV tree onto the Zed's head, so good on him. Definitely good on him considering I hadn't brought any of the extra goodies with me. I'd need to dig those out at the first opportunity. I bobbed my head a little in the direction of the zombie, "Hey Saeko you mind hitting him- it in the head, just to be sure" I could have shot it, but we really didn't need to be making any more noise than absolutely necessary.

I looked around as they started talking. I moved over to the medical supplies. True I had packed what I could during the time I had to prep, but I wasn't going to pass up more supplies when they presented themselves. I reached around and pulled open the tote bag I had brought with me, that had been packed inside one of the duffle bags. Clean bandages were really something to try and stock up on, as was stuff like advil or generic stuff like APC tablets.

The nurse, and Saeko were having some rapid fire discussion of the best way to get away from the school.

The final consensus was we needed to go to the teacher's lounge, which was were the nurse's keys were. I told them up front once we got the keys I'd meet them in the parking lot. Ishi, the sophmore who'd brained the zombie with the IV tree, objected a bit to that.

Telling them my ride was a multi ton armored vehicle... well running around with a bunch of guns in Japan was one thing... a very odd thing but this was crises so that could be presumably hand wave... better to wait. "Look kid all you've got to do is follow her, and whoever else to the buses." I clapped a hand on his shoulder "I will meet you there," At his look I laid it out, "I've got a ride, I'll drive it around, but I've got to be able to move quickly... now come on." It wasn't like I was trying to ditch them, they knew this town, and I needed to be with someone who did.

We moved down the hallway heading towards the teacher's lounge... geez a lot of these kids were gonna get eaten it seemed so pathetic. These kids the ones who were just milling about in their classrooms... geez there were zombies yeah, but there were gunshots. Some of them at least , like the ones from the first floor,were demonstrating the good sense to run, whether it was to hide in some other room or on the roof, or wherever.

As it turned out the nurse did have a car. Just not one with enough space to carry her, Saeko, and Ishi all together. Ishi has some stupid idea of staying behind, and then riding with me... if its alright of course he added a minute later eying the black metal military issue HK.

I figured he probably was thinking that I had some big muscle car, like a thunderbird, or maybe a gigantic ford escalade. Americans all drive Sports Cars or SUVs right? I mean thats the stereotype, and well I did drive an SUV back home. A tiny car wasn't really ideal for getting around in this situation... especially not the one the Nurse was describing... cars weren't my thing, but what she was talking about sounded something like what Scott wanted.

Either way getting through the hallway had lead to other students, and well...

... it was a serious fucking nail gun. The kid was using a nail gun to kill zombies. I wasn't even going to comment on the home built stock. "Look lets just get to the teacher's lounge," I grunted, there was some murmuring as Saeko helped the chick who introduced herself as Takagi (Saya) up. Getting into the teacher's lounge wasn't a big problem.

"We should stay together."

I shrugged, "Okay, and then what. I could give you a lift to the minbus out there," I said gesturing to the parking lot, "its not going to be comfortable though." There was a general consensus that it couldn't be any worse than this. After all what were the other options I run off on my own to the 'car', and they run all the way to the parking lot on foot while I drive that way.

I didn't see a PA system, so telling everybody else in the school to do something wasn't going to work... well it had just been an idea to begin with. I really didn't think trying to shoot my way to the office, or where ever the intercom was, was going to work either.

"Lets catch our breath here, and then we'll figure out what to do alright?"

The kid who'd introduced himself as Takashi agreed, "I guess that'll work," He had a baseball bat, and the girl he was with had... what I thought might have been a mop maybe with the mop head taken off.

I moved over to the window, it wasn't like there was anything else to do until they were ready. The kind of chubby kid glanced at my guns. "Those are -" His eyes kind of widened, he focused in on the SMG cradled in my arms "THATS THE HK MP5K PDW," He exclaimed.

Oh boy what I had gotten myself into.

-scene break-


	2. Chapter 2 Roll out Roll call

Roll Out, Roll Call

Helltanz's notes:

-scene break-

After really quick introductions in the break room we figured out how we were going to get to the buses. We'd headed straight from the break room, and along the way picked up a small group of student survivors being lead by a guy with a baseball bat. Getting from the ground floor to the ASLAV wasn't hard, per se. It'd been even easier to attract the zombies to come to me.

The 25 in ASLAV 25 stood for the Bushmaster 25 mm. The M242 autocannon made the 9mm HK seem silent in comparison. I clambered into the turret, and pulled a pair of ear muffs on, over my earplugs. The single shot fire mode still made a god awful racket, and I felt sorry for anyone not wearing ear protection even if they were in a building.

The nurse (Shizuka), the sword chick (Saeko), the gadgeteer (Kohta), the sophmore (Kazu), the guy with the bat (Takashi) and his friend with the mop (Rei), and drill girl (Saya) along with the handful of other students we'd picked up as we made our way from the break room took the 'hint' and came out the double doors. I'd told them you'll know the signal when you heard it.

I popped the gunner's hatch, yeah the extra people kind of complicated the you can ride until we get to the buses part of the plan. Most of them were clutching theirs ears, except the gadgeteer kid who'd taken the spare ear plugs I had had. Then again they'd probably figured I was just going to shoot some more. I waved at them to get their attention, "Move it!" I shouted, gesturing for them to come on forward. The HK had been one thing, but now most of them were staring at the thirteen and a half ton vehicle that I'd driven up the front. "Lets go," I called again we didn't have time for this.

Kohta pulled himself up on top, "Aren't you going to open the back?" He asked, "wouldn't that be better to carry everyone?" The military Otaku was already getting situated in the other cupola. I knew what he was getting at. His point was that the LAV series, even the 25 with its M242 accommodating turret, could carry a squad of soldiers in full ruck, with rifles.

I shook my head at him, and waved to the others who were started to try and get a foothold on the vehicle to climb up, "I don't have the room for all of you inside right now, sorry now get clamoring onto the top and hold on," I dropped back into the hatch. The heavy Detroit diesel engine rumbled as it shifted into drive, "We're moving out," I shouted over the noise. The armored vehicle started moving it wasn't that far so the people who couldn't get on to the ASLAV could still run out to the side of it while I drove along. It naturally wouldn't be as safe but it wasn't that far either.

The distance from the entrance to the parking lot was probably about a football field in length, maybe a little more.

As far as vehicles went I was really fond of the LAV series for a number of reasons. I put the brake on, and pulled myself out of the hatch okay. Driving the LAV series was great it was an automatic, and well it was a bit like driving a stupidly big truck. The only major thing I'd have worry about was overpasses. Well then, "You have the keys?" I asked popping my head out of the driver's cupola.

Shizuka who had been clutching onto her purse for dear life started rifling through the bag, and pulled out the requested object. "Oh yes they're right here,"

I nodded, and pulled myself out of the ASLAV's cupola, and slid down and started walking towards the back of the ASLAV, Hirano jumped down and scrambled after me. I was actually going for the dufflebags, but he probably figured I was going to open the back. "Alright, then get in there and get the bus started. The rest of you need to find a seat, you'll be leading the way." I told Shizuka. I said pushing the spare tire for vehicle out of the way. I didn't want to start fiddling trying to crawl in and out of the side access hatch in this situation.

I yanked a bag down, and opened it, and glanced at Hirano who took a tentative step back. He was just a high schooler after all... crazy gadgeteer or not, between him and Saeko I wasn't sure which one scared me more. I waved him over. As soon as I got the chance I was going to pull much 308 ammo as I could and stow in the outer ammo boxes, that way I could put the bags in. After I got what I needed I re secured the bag using the same straps I'd tied it on with the first time, and walked back to the bus.

Our movements had gotten us the attention of some of the other students on the ground floor, and a bunch of them were heading this way. I made a couple half hearted, by no means enthusiatic gestures for the running students to hurry up and get over here before turning back, "Alright make sure everyone is in their seats. I'll follow after you,"

"Shouldn't you be in front thought?" Ishi asked as Takashi shouted something to Saeko about more survivors coming this way.

My eyebrow quirked and I gave Ishi a look. I reached into my chest pouch and pulled one of the things I'd grabbed out of my bag, and handed it to him. "I don't know the town. So I'm going to follow after, if you need me to punch corridor I will, but I'm in this without knowing whats where better the bus is in the lead." Me in the front driving wouldn't do anyone any good. I turned and looked at Rei who was arguing with Takashi, and exited the vehicle, "Lets get out of here, get in the bus!" I shouted to the people who were nearly here, before I rushed to open the gate and looked around. There were a handful of zombies down the road. "We'll find somewhere to stop along the way and figure out from there, lets go move it." It was the best thing I could think of at the time to keep them moving. As long as I kept shouting at the people maybe they'd move a little faster.

Thinking that maybe we could save the school wasn't going to do any good. Maybe some of the people still inside could have some brains and could survive was all well and good but if those people existed at all they were on their own. Hopefully enough zombies had been drawn by the sound of the Bushmaster that was atop the ASLAV that they'd be able to barricade the door. Hopefully the zombies would try and follow after the sound of the 275 horsepower engine as we rolled away from the school, and towards where ever the fuck we were gonna go.

I'd look back every now and again, back towards the school. The last of the students who'd made it to the bus were climbing on board, along with some teacher who must of made it. I glanced back to the zombies coming towards us. They were still a ways off, way too far, at least sixty to seventy meters, to try and headshot them with the MP5 even with the red dot... not worth it. I opened one of the velcro pouches on my tote bag and pulled a walkie talkie I'd grabbed from a dufflebag earlier, and walked onto the bus. We'd gotten joined by another group of survivors, and a teacher, this must have been the group Takashi had been shouting about.

Hirano, the kind of chubby kid, who'd turned the Nailgun into a carbine took one look at it and knew instantly what it was for, "That'll let us keep in touch while we're driving," He'd blathered off some technical specification about it. I knew most of what he was saying but couldn't recall it that fast.

"Yeah," I said a little slowly, bit drawn out, "Exactly," I handed it over, and he stared at it. There was a little bit of pride there. Well if he could make a carbine out of a nail gun he could work radio, "keep in contact," I glanced back, "and figure out a place that is safe to stop, and we'll plan when we get a moment," I was really hoping that moment came soon considering these were the only people I knew who knew anything about this damned city in the first place. "Right I'm getting into my ride, we'll figure out something when we have a place to stop preferably when there aren't zed all bearing down on us." I stepped down and out of the bus, "I mean it keep in contact."

I glanced back at the Zombies coming, and got into the ASLAV and checked just to make sure the radio worked, it did. It would have been nice if I had been able to get the radio in the ASLAV set up, but I didn't have the time to fiddle with that. Especially since it would mean having to read the operating manual for both the radio, and the ASLAV, and involve probably needing a computer.

At least Kohta wasn't spazzing out over the pintle mounted MAGs. Then again the MAG was really a generic 7.62 general purpose machine gun. I looked back into the stuffed rear of the armored vehicle, well that was good sign. All the ammo, I was definitely going to get more use out of the 9mm at least if I armed the others. 5 bags was a lot of room, and I'd brought spare guns just in case. I had packed magazine adapters for the MAGs so it wasn't like the 7.62 would go to waste either if it came to that.

I looked around. The school ... zombies were visible in some of the nearer windows, but so to were survivors. It felt wrong leaving them. Still we left now or ran the risk of actually getting eaten. I looked back into the interior, yeah all of this was going to need to be repacked, we'd need to find like a car park or something, or even a regular park preferably something with a secure fence around it. This was a lot of bullets. I grabbed a fifty round box of nine, and dropped into one of the deep exterior side pouches of my jacket, and shut everything back up. I'd reshuffle when I had time, which wasn't now. I heard the bus revv up, and walked around to the other side. School was partially walled in, actual walls not a fence for the most part. There were from my position at least two major entrances, one for the parking lot, and the main gate entrance that I had entered from. I could only speculate that the actual wall probably surrounded three sides, with the back parking lot covered by that high iron fence. It would have been a good place to secure if it was possible.

-scene break-

I quickly became glad I had my own ride the nurse was...not exactly... her driving was scary which was why I was going slow, and staying back as needed. If she stopped suddenly I wanted to be able to stop, and doing so without crashing into the back of them... that wouldn't be pleasant. I was also wishing I had a seatbelt, you know just in case. Shizuka's driving was pretty scary.

We ended up driving for a couple of minutes before I got the radio message that they were looking for somewhere to stop. I kind of wondered what had happened considering that they'd pulled off on the side of the road presumably just to say that. Considering we'd passed a convenience store a little ways back I was kind of wondering why we hadn't stopped there, but then I wasn't in the front of the convoy... second car doesn't get to make that choice.

I'd asked as much, very loudly and rather aggressively over the radio. At the same time though that convenience store was probably as good of place as any. I'd kind of wanted to stop there to get supplies when we'd passed it. As it was I was pretty much the only one who had had real prep time. I was honestly surprised no one had called me on being crazy prepared yet. The rest of them needed supplies though, I'd brought stuff sure, but even though 5 bags was a lot of space it wasn't enough for a dozen plus people even with the way I'd packed.

Still even with that thought, Hirano radioing in had me a little concerned. From the sound of the background noise there was arguing. At least one of the high schoolers was having a fit. It wasn't like it wasn't a completely understandable response to the situation. Spazzing out, yeah, throwing a fit it was reasonable given the situation at the same time though now was not that time.

I sighed grabbing the radio, "That convenience store would have been better, but this will work," I grunted popping the hatch. This was not what I had meant when I'd said to find a fucking place to stop. Whatever this was we did need to sort it out. I looked back down the cupola where my ruck was sitting behind the driver's seat, and then went out the hatch leaving it behind.

I really hoped that by mentioned the convenience store they'd figure out what all they needed supply wise. I knew Ishi, Saya, and Kohta had glasses, so they'd probably need spare lenses. Hopefully they knew they needed supplies as well. Then again they might not. Well I'd mention it casually after we figured out what was up.

I barely waited before hauling out of the armored vehicle. There were no Zombies around, which was a good thing, but I really hoped we could fix whatever it was fast. From the way everyone was tensed up I kind of figured somebody had gotten into a fight. In a way that was a good thing. If this had been a mechanical, like a radiator hose, or an oil line tear, issue we would have been hoofing it, and that wouldn't have been good. I looked around the toyota minibus.

"Alright whats going on?" It came off more tired than anything, but it probably was still rudely phrased. The other teacher turned around a bit suddenly, like he didn't know how to summarize. We hadn't really said anything before leaving the school. He and his group of survivors had joined us, and Takuzo's group at the last minute piling into the bus, because of that there hadn't been time to exchange much in the way of words. That was the problem I figured I hadn't learned any of these people's names but the ones I'd met before we left the teacher's lounge. Well I needed answers, and I didn't have a whole lot of options on sources, "Saeko what happened,"

"There was a disagreement between Takashi and Tsunoda," She stopped and gestured to one of kids who'd rushed to get on the bus. From Saeko's recounting he'd flipped his shit, not that she'd put it like that, and got clocked by Rei. He'd apparently bitched out over how he was stuck with us, and how they should have stayed at the school. "and now Shidou-sensei thinks we should decide on a leader here."

I nodded, and this was some stupid shit. I walked down the isle, "We'll deal that in a minute, hey," i nudged the kid with dyed orange hair my boot, "listen up, no body dragged you along. Now you could have stayed at the fucking school. You could have secreted yourself away on the roof, but you chose to come with us so keep your ass in line or walk away." I was sure for a minute he was going to mouth off, but then again he was half curled into the fetal position already clutching his side. There was still that look in his eyes, but I guess being the angry rude gaijin had its perks. I wasn't going to be able to keep this up though, "ok so leader thing." I looked over at the teacher.

"Yes well as a teacher I'm the only one." I looked at him pointedly, and he stopped, when he didn't start back up I made a little gesture for him to get on with it. It made sense guy probably didn't know what was going on. Hell I wasn't completely sure myself, but I was also the only non Japanese person here so he was probably right to wonder what my stake in this was.

I shrugged, "Okay dude school is out," so being a teacher means shit I wasn't actually going to say that it was a little ruder than I wanted, who knew maybe this guy meant well, or maybe it was some social quirk or whatever, "Right now," That was about as far I got.  
The chick- not Takagi err Rei yeah, I think, crossed her arms, "I'm leaving if Shidou is going to be in charge. I'll get off here then,"

What the fuck. Okay then, I raised my hands, "Hold up, look can you," Takashi didn't wait, and declared that he'd be bailing too, so he could go with Rei. All of a sudden Ishi, and Saeko, and Hirano looked like they were looking at me. Fuck now being the heavily armed over prepared gaijin suddenly sucked. It made sense though I was the best prepared out of all of them. Why listen to the school teacher when there was a well armed military equipped guy right there. This wasn't nBSG. "Look we have two vehicles," I didn't want to screw things up, that was the last thing I wanted. "I don't have the room right now to safely move half of you," and I didn't because the entire rear compartment was stuffed with ammo, but they could find that out after we stopped somewhere that wasn't the middle of the road right passed a bridge that had a fifteen plus foot drop to water. "so lets get somewhere we can be out of the way." I stated, "Lets find somewhere around here we can settle this. We don't need to do this here."

Somewhere up the road there was a burning smoke cloud, which probably meant a crash. Given how there were a number of smoke columns I wondered how many fires were burning right now. Zombies meant panic. Panic meant Fire, and EMS would be so overburdened they wouldn't have enough men. Not enough men meant they'd either have to prioritize, and leave some, or spread everyone too thin. Either choice meant some fires would get more out of hand.

"Higashi police station," Takashi suggested, "We can go to Higashi Police station. If we go there there might be police, and more guns means and we'll have a better chance of surviving them."

I looked at him, it was a pretty good point, and shrugged, "Okay sounds good, I was going to say the convenience store we passed but fine." Doubling back probably wasn't a good idea anyway. I glanced at Shidou.

"Thats fine with me, I mean if every-" That was as far as he got, there was no way I was putting this to a vote with a bunch of panicky high schoolers

My eyes narrowed, "We are not voting right now," I told him, we had a driver, and that was all we needed for the minute. Trying to run an election was just going to spark another fight I figured, and democracy in the middle of a crises going to get more people killed.

"We do need a leader," He pointed out, and I shrugged, and responded that it'd be best to figure out what to do when we weren't sitting on the middle of road doing nothing. I told Hirano to keep in touch, and tell me if anything happened. Then I marched back to the ASLAV.

We started driving and it turned out there was a big old burning bus, like a greyhound. There were zombies were milling about it, along with some corpses that had even been burned alive... or whatever inside the thing. It'd probably been the cause of the crash earlier. "oi I'll take front for this bit and then you can pass around me after we get clear," Might as well use the weight advantage to push through just in case. It either way wasn't a big deal, we just needed to keep rolling through. I looked through the port and saw the Nissan logo on the bus, and then the scrap as the LAV squeezed its way through.

Takashi had a point maybe the cops were on the ball, and we could hole up with them. If not... well maybe the police station would be good enough for what we needed. The convenience store would have had foodstuffs, and such, but we probably could have find something useful at the station. I was really hoping that would turn out to be the case. Even just a map would be good.

The ride was mostly quiet as the school nurse resumed her usual position... funny how that was seemingly normal so quick... of in front of the armored vehicle. From the play by play Hirano was giving me Rei was really not keen on the teacher which was probably going to be an issue sooner rather than later. She was already complaining about it. I really had to wonder what was up.

As it was this drama fest was getting tiresome, and at the same time sooner or later that other high schooler was probably going to throw another fit. I didn't know what his deal with Takashi was either, of course it could be sports related both of them seemed like the athletic type.

For the time being though it'd be best if we all stuck together, until they could get some supplies of their own. The other problem was Shidou was still running his mouth, apparently he still thought the best was to go about this was trying to win votes... fucker. "Hirano pass the radio to Saeko."

"err right, just a minute." He responded and then went quiet probably as we was walking up the isle or whatever to hand her the radio... at least he wasn't throwing it. "here she is- over."

I rolled my eyes. "Hey, look from the sound of it this is getting out of hand. We need to hurry up and get to where we're going." I was kind of iffy about putting Hirano anywhere near the systems of the ASLAV, but right now it was loaded down with ammo. If the police station was safe enough I needed to move a bunch of stuff around, "If this keeps up we might need for some of you guys to come ride on top of my vehicle, at least till I can move some stuff.. Take this over to Shidou,"

"Hello?"

Not going to be my best impromptu speech, "Look we should have taken two buses, I'm assuming you can drive the bus,"

"Well yes I can as a teacher,"

I kept going. I could almost feel him preening. It had been a rhetorical question, but maybe that didn't translate well, "and we should have stopped and sorted things out at the gas station. We didn't. So lets get to the police station, and we'll figure out how we're settling this. We're probably going to end up splitting into two groups so keep an eye out on places to gather food from,"

"We should all be working together," Shidou protested.

I agreed with him, though probably not for the same cultural reasons. We were in the middle of the zombie apocalypse as not fucking crazy people we should have been trying to help each other. "Yeah well things don't always go that way, figure out how much further it is." I grunted.

-scene break-

When we ended up coming to a stop, which was to say Shizuka hit the breaks pretty sudden, I already had a bad feeling about all this even before I got out. I was seriously regretting not stopping sooner especially with the arguing that had been going on in the bus. This feeling just got worse considering the police station was eery completely deserted. Fuck the place probably had zed inside. So much for the cops being able to help.

I was really hoping we didn't have to stay here any longer than necessary, but I'd need some time to move stuff around.

Shidou gave me a look as I walked up. The high schoolers had all gotten out of the bus and were clamoring about looking around. "Well we're here."

"Yeah," I kept using that word. It was tic, just like how I was checking over my HK right now, "well you kept wanting to go for a vote. Figure who's going with you." I grunted, "any one who's coming with me I need to figure how we're going to ride." I declared waving them over.

Unsurprisingly Ishi rushed over, still holding on to the Impact baton I'd given him almost an hour ago, and Hirano came along with him of course. Shidou looked a little put out, even as I clamored up the ASLAV to the storage racks. I wasn't going to try and bribe anyone, they could come with me if they wanted, or stick Shidou not my business.

Takuzo's group of five decided to stay back as well. I guess they had decided to ride with Shidou, which was good in a way, it saved me space.

The teacher was already taking a roll of who all was coming with him even as I tossed down one of the duffle bags off the ASLAV, and onto the pavement. Shidou didn't seem overly keen with splitting up.

I didn't blame him for feeling that way. I might have been a stranger but we probably did have a better chance all working together. He did have another point though in these situations it was important to have a leader. It was just a fact.

I finally opened the back of the ASLAV.

Hirano knew what they were in an instant, "Thats a lot of bullets," that was an understatement. Each individual box was either a box 20 308 rounds, or a box of 50 9x19mm rounds. They were stacked from the floor of the LAV's rear compartment to the ceiling. That was indeed a lot of bullets.

"Yeah," Was all I said for a minute, "Give me a hand with the 7.62 boxes, we're going to fill the ammo boxes up top." He nodded and took the arms full of PMC brand 308 I passed to him. I looked back at the people who'd decided to come with me. We were going to need plenty of water. Plenty of food too for that matter.

It was going to be a problem figuring out where all to put them. It was possible to roll down the road with people riding on top of the turret and on the top. Of course we also needed to know where we were going. Staying out in the open in the middle of the police department, the creepy and empty as fuck police department, parking lot was a not a good plan. "While we're doing this figure out a place where we can hunker down for the night." I told them I didn't know this town, so in that respect I was pretty dependent on their expertise.

I did a quick headcount. Me plus Ishi, Kohta, Saeko, Shizuka, Takashi, Saya, and Rei was a total of eight people, which meant I was pushing it. We needed to find a second car preferably something with four doors... and gods willing some space in the back preferably an SUV, though a car we could make do with.

"We should also gather weapons, if we can find them." Takshi suggested taking a handful of ammo from Hirano. Him, and Ishi had apparently volunteered to help Kohta move the ammo up to the storage boxes.

I figured that Saya, and Rei could probably cram into the back. The boys could ride on the turret, and then Saeko and Suzuka for the moment could ride in the cupolas on the turret.

I looked over the motley collection of improvised weapons, "Yeah," taking with us any decent weapons we found was a good idea. I had other guns, stored away in my bag. I had a collection of other tools, and weapons to, but digging them out would take time, and had other problems. I craned my head about to take in the surrounding... from everything I'd observed this was not Tokyo, that much was obvious. Probably a smaller city north of Tokyo, but the north was speculation I just knew for sure this wasn't Yokohama, but we were on the coast somewhere.

Amongst that list of possible problems involved the fact we'd just divided into groups. The people who were riding with Shidou were people I hadn't even really gotten a proper introduction to, and they seemed confident Shidou could lead them. If I suddenly dug out three rifles, and handed them to their classmates, and then drove off it ran the risk of seriously demoralizing possibly their entire group. At this point it was all about morale they needed to stick together long enough to get situated at least that was the theory for disasters.

There was another reason I wasn't handing out guns just yet. I knew at some point I'd have, and I fully intended to share. The other thing holding me back from taking the time to do so, was that these were high school students, and if this had been America it wouldn't have been such a big deal. It wasn't though, because this was Japan and most of these kids had probably never seen a modern firearm up close until today. The last thing we needed on top of zombies was a firearms accident, and for that reason I was going to hold off until we found some tall secure building that we could shoot safely from, unless I had no other choice.

I didn't even think to ask if anyone had handled a gun before. Kohta clearly knew a lot about them. I heard the mini bus start. Shidou must have figured that without any other options now was a good time to get out of here. It was probably good idea. Now really wasn't the time to be lolly gagging around. It was time to roll out.

"We'll need to get another vehicle right away," Saya remarked after we'd started to cram into the ASLAV I hadn't started the engine just yet.

I nodded, "Yeah, and place to crash," I blinked, they probably wouldn't understand that, "Sleep I mean, but another vehicle would be good I need to free up some space."

Shizuka spoke up rather suddenly at this, "I have a place," Well no one else seemed to have any other suggestions, and I had to admit I was kind of curious to see what this 'tank' looked like... especially considering what I was driving. Of course now we needed Shizuka to give coherent directions to someone who didn't have a map, and didn't know the streets... we were so going to get lost.

-scene break-


	3. Chapter 3 The First House with the Tank

We're the First House with the Tank

-scene break-

I could understand why most of them didn't come. It was a logical combination of factors. I was a stranger, and Shidou wasn't. Even if they didn't have a reason to distrust me, they were probably more confident in their ability to trust the teacher. There was also the fact that I was rather gruff, and the bus clearly had more space. Any nascent anti militarism would have also played a role in the choice as well. Then there was the decision to split up had been pretty abrupt, and had come on the wheels of an argument, and Shidou pushing to be the leader.

Actually that had probably been the main thing that had gotten them to go. Shidou's adamancy over being the appropriate choice for leader was backed by confidence, and no body else had been so dramatically stepping up from the 'pool' of 'appropriate' canidates. On top of that there were a lot of factors that made people decide on what they had. I had no earthly idea what Shidou was going to do but he was on his own, unless we ran back into them. Hopefully he'd have the good sense to get food, and clothes.

I had made sure to point that out. Also they needed to get bags. It was common sense to know about food and water, they'd probably figure out clothes, and something to put stuff in pretty quickly as they started gathering food up so I wasn't too worried. He had the advantage of being the one driving, and he knew the city.

Shizuka suggestion for where we should go was as good as any especially since it really was for the best to try and have at least two vehicles. If we had been in this situation in America I'd have thought three vehicles would have been ideal. That wasn't likely to work in the crowded confines of a bustling Japanese metropolis. Of course two was the absolute minimum we had to have for getting around in this situation.

The ride over hadn't been exceedingly troublesome... I could follow directions. We'd seen a couple of people driving, but it seemed like the roads were mostly empty. The cars that were present were just empty... for one reason or another. It seemed most people were staying insider their homes; in accordance with a request from the authorities. So for right now there weren't any real problems driving around.

The real problem was actually, had been clearing up the area around the house. As far as choices for secondary vehicles the 'girlfriend's' hummer was pretty good. I didn't consider it ideal, for gas reasons but it would work. So Takashi, Ishi, Hirano, and I started moving some of the ammo to the hummer. We had a little while until dusk, and the girls were rushing to go freshen up, which was understandable.

"Thats a lot of bullets."Kohta stated looking at the mass of boxes. Individually each box of 20 308 caliber bullets was rather compact, and the 50 round 9mm boxes were only slightly larger by comparison. Without measuring I'd guess each individual box of 9mm was around maybe two inches in height.

While the girls had stayed inside after we'd checked out the interior, just in case, we'd stayed outside and made a little bit of small talk as we figured out the best way to handle this. I nodded, "It really is," We really just needed to move enough to make sure we could sit down in the back of the ASLAV. "Just free up some room thats all we need." Hirano nodded, he didn't question the dearth of 308 not with the two MAG 58s on top of the ASLAV's hull.

"What about that safe in there?" Ishi questioned, "And shouldn't we move some whats out here inside the house,"

He had a point, and I pointed to one of the spare tote bags, "Load that with 7.62," I gestured at the appropriate box, "we'll take some inside, and stick it somewhere, "And then we'll get to the safe, but lets finish this first." He nodded. I planned on grabbing the spare gun bag and bringing it in just in case we had to actually shoot something.

"Hai sensei."Ishi chimed in picking up the bag, and starting poking through the pile .

... oh fuck me really. Yeah sure I knew from a purely professional standpoint it was 'correct' but that crap was going to get annoying fast. "We also need to figure out how we're going to be moving, staying here for tonight is a good idea, but we do need to be able to move if necessary."  
"Agreed," It was Takashi who said that as he and Hirano moved another stack of boxes off the seats of the ASLAV.

I set my own armful of ammo down into the pile, "Shizuka will be driving the hummer thats not an issue, and she is going to have to have people with here. Somebody needs to have a radio with them while she's driving." There was some acknowledgment to this. On the one hand they were high schoolers, on the other this ran the risk of being a total sausage fest in my vehicle. "Also we need to conserve space for holding supplies." which was pretty obvious.

I gestured to the duffle bags still on the external racks and started going to bring them down to put in the ASLAV. I'd wondered why I had felt off earlier, and then when we'd turned on the TV back at the school it had made sense. It was the year 2007. I was five years younger putting me closer to their age.

After we'd gotten clear of Shidou's group's line of sight I'd taken them off to the side and opened the back, and one of the five bags just so they'd know ahead of time. Ishi had of course been given one of my impact batons earlier, and well Saeko had her kendo stick but the rest... Arming the rest of them was getting increasingly appealing so I'd unrolled the mat holding a variety of things with sharp ends.

I left the knives put up, but the spare machete, and hatchets came out to play. These things were useful in a more woodland environment, which was what I'd planned for, but here they'd be good as a just in case kind of thing. Takashi was keeping his bat, but then he'd already proven he knew what to do with it. Still at least it had kind of evened us out on armament. Ideally at some point I could pass a gun off to Hirano, who had said he knew how to use one. He certainly knew the basics for gun safety. If he said he'd shot one before then at this stage it was probably worth it to take the chance.

After we closed up the back of the ASLAV and the Humvee we turned back to the house, "Might want to get food going," I had munched on an energy bar while we'd been driving but I doubt any of them had had any food sense before this whole mess started. Takashi picked up a crowbar that he'd found inside the house.

I grinned, he had the right idea "Glad to see you're prepared." I can't believe we were really going to crack open a safe. I mean staying in this chick's apartment was one thing but really this was... That line of thinking stopped immediately. We'd all split up to sweep the house, and when they'd told me about it I had figured it was some dinky little wall safe or something this was a little different. I dropped my tote back on the ground. "Hey Hirano its probably a shotgun in there are you up for using that?"

The ecstatic reply I got from the Otaku was promising at least. He ran over to the safe as I was putting my M14 down. "Lets open it already." He called.

Yeah I was in agreement with that, after we did this I needed to go look around, while they were cooking food, and while stuff was being loaded. "I had other guns, but these might be good for you guys to use depending on what they had," Most likely they were shotguns, if we were lucky pumps. It was Japan after all. At Hirano's look I nodded, "yeah well I haven't had the chance to unpack them, but lets go ahead and open this." I gestured for Ishi to hold the side of the safe.

It took some effort to get it open, but the crowbar managed to pull it open... fuck. Well there was a shotgun for sure, but damn. I heard some vague comment about illegal firearms, and kept looking at them.

Inside there were three guns, three long guns. It wasn't like I had been expecting handguns, but two semiautomatic rifles, and a shotgun wasn't what I'd been expecting. "Good thing we've got a dearth of 308," I muttered, as Hirano was already examining the Springfield M1A supermatch.

He turned after he put it down and moved on to the tricked out AR 10. "You're right, all of these and your M14 are in the ..." Oh god he was doing it again, a definite gun otaku moment. "and because they're semi automatic we'll definitely have plenty of ammo," Of the three guns though we'd definitely run out of ammo for the Ithaca first. "We should load these now,"

"Yeah," I agreed picking up my tote and pulling a box of 308 out, "We'll take that ammo with us, lets use this first," I commented picking up a magazine. It wasn't entirely altruism, the ammo that I had in bulk was primarily 'plinking ammo' for me, and we had a lot of it. Hirano already knew how to load a magazine, he'd said he'd learned from getting tutored in an Army base in America... funny that. It made showing Takashi and Ishi easier, There was probably another hour until night fell completely, but at least the power was holding up.

I looked around food definitely going to have to see about raiding the pantry... and water. The girls were taking a bath, but what we were definitely going to need was water. Raiding a gas station definitely was going to be a good idea. Of course we'd have to wait until tomorrow for that.

Once the mags were loaded we uprooted the safe turning it on its back, after removing everything from it. With the guns loaded, and all the spare, non trash, equipment packed then moved to the kitchen. I figured the best way to do this was to grab whatever we could, "What are we going to do?" Ishi asked as I pulled down the pots that I could get to."

"Get as much water as possible before the pipes stop pumping,"

Hirano nodded like he thought it was a good idea, but stopped, "But even with that we won't be able to stay for very long with Them out there. Gathering food and water here is a good idea, and using what we have is certainly, but..."

"Then we'll leave what we can't take, and whoever comes in after us will at least have some water, get any thing out of the freezer, we might as well east it first." Anything that would spoil would go bad fairly quickly once the power failed, and if we were lucky the grid would probably be online for another day or so. "Speaking of gathering supplies we do need to be ready to move out."

I was reminded of how much I hated apartments, even relatively big ones like this. I hadn't expected to have this kind of good fortune when packing my bag. Shizuka's girlfriend had guns covered, but I couldn't really say much about the stock of food. Well as long as the power didn't go out while we were cooking I suppose it wasn't that big of a deal.

When I'd been packing I'd gone for being prepared, but it was also true I'd packed based on expectations that were not likely to be true in Japan. When I'd packed my five bags I hadn't really thought too indepth about arming other people.

The shotgun was a good find though, even if I personally wasn't keen on them. They were simple to use, and clean, so the recoil would really be the only issue besides ammo. It was likely to be the first gun we ran out of ammo. Those were the breaks though, while we still had a little bit of light we needed to figure out where we were going to go if we needed to lead, because trying to figure that out at the last minute while we were trying to drive through zombie hordes was not going to be fun.

I could clear the road temporarily with my ASLAV, either by running them over or using the ammo for the Bushmaster. Of course I only had some much ammo for that as well, even on single shot mode. I had also used it to clear some space at the school.

In the best case it had done some good, and convinced some of the students to show some brains, and get clear of the zombies and be quiet. Not that we were being all that quiet ourselves. Right now though most people seemed to be staying in their houses, which was surprisingly but kept the streets semi clear so at least we could see anything walking towards us.

"I can handle the food sensei," Ishi interjected as I looked through freezer. My Japanese might have been improved but reading this at the moment wasn't fun, so I stepped back, and let him have at it. I took another couple of steps and looked towards the stairs, and then back at my watch. We'd driven from the school, and even with the brief, and annoying stops, along the way we'd managed to find some where to set up at fairly quickly. At the very least we should be solid for the night, and that was definitely a good thing.

"Hey," I blinked as Saeko, and Shizuka, and... Rei?... I think, all came down the stairs. "I'm going to start cooking so we'll have lunch tomorrow."

I blinked at the apron the sword girl was wearing, "Uh right," Well … she was at least thinking ahead, which was a plus. It was nice to see someone else doing that.  
"I'm sorry none of the clothes would fit me," She smiled for a minute, "its a little indecent." She admitted.

Fucking weird ass half bow thing, I got enough of that at the damn Japanese joint in my home town as it was, "Uh Ishi is already started yeah go ahead." I stepped out of the way. "We'll hit somewhere tomorrow to get some practical clothes for everyone." I added, gods above knew we'd need it.

I waved Hirano over, "If they're out and handling food what do we do? I mean should we, we should keep watch," he declared tightening his grip on the AR 10. I shrugged, and nodded, and started up the stairs towards the balcony.

The nurse, and Rei were drinking sake, or what I assumed, which certainly didn't seem like a good idea, but who was I to talk. They had a bit of a point in drinking, it had been a hard day for them. I couldn't even say anything I'd drank while I was in high school, and I didn't have a clue what Japan's drinking age was to begin with so it wasn't like I'd have some bullshit moral outrage over it.

I leaned up on the railing, and looked out. The city had some bits with lights on, but it was getting dark, and well. Hirano had a mag light he'd taken out of my tote, which he'd stuck in his newly acquired tactical vest that he'd found in the apartment, but more importantly he had a pair of binoculars in his hand.

I tapped my hand on the railing as I watched the horizon, before swinging the EBR over the railing and shouldering it... it was hideously quiet. The news broadcast had told everyone to stay inside, so hopefully some people had the brains to do just that preferably behind a barricaded door, and on the second floor. Of course even if they did stay inside it didn't stop the idiots who didn't. I looked through the NVG, yeah Zed bunches way down the avenue. I checked my watch.

Arrival + 8 hours... and some change

I loosened, and lowered the rifle, "There is a lot of them," I sighed, "good thing we packed some of the things already. If we have to leave tonight its going to be in a hurry." We'd needed to pack some more though. Down side was from all I'd seen of the surrounding area there wasn't any place we'd passed that was good for our vehicles and us.

"Totally," Hirano agreed looking through the binoculars. "If we had gone into the police station there probably would have been zombies in there to."

Probably so, it'd been unnaturally quiet there, empty, dead. "This place would have been good to hole up in, but its going to be compromised soon," I adjusted my rifle, and swung towards the bridge. It was easily the biggest source of light, and noise, Zombies were probably heading right towards it. From what I could see there were emergency response vehicles there; cops and firemen it looked like but I hadn't heard any gunshots yet. "Tomorrow we're going to have to go, and we need to pick up clothes, and food, and bottled water."

That ingrate on the bus had a point maybe we should have stayed at the school. Then again all that was said and done, there was no going back. That little punk might have had a point, but we made our choice and no one forced him to get on that bus. So here we were.

I glanced at Hirano who nodded. "thats why you grabbed those medical supplies from the school's nurse station," He said, "even if you're well supplied right now thats all stuff you brought it won't last long if we're all using it. We just haven't had the time, but with these, and we have time to compose ourselves and plan our next move, and preparation is the key to battle."

"If we have to bust out here through them," I jerked my head towards the zombies up the road, "I'll take point and while they're closing I'm going to hit them with the bushmaster, and then drive forward." It'd probably be overkill but I didn't want to get to used to trying to run over zombies with the thirteen tonnes of armor. I hadn't looked at the suspension but if it was an actual, and it looked like it had the armor plating to be, it should be pretty sturdy. The problem was it still had four wheels and it could still lock up.

I turned a bit at the smell of food coming from the kitchen. "That smells good," Hirano voiced, kid probably hadn't had anything to eat all day so I could understand.

"Well we'll eat with the rest of them," Maybe not all of them, Shizuka and Rei had both been drinking so they probably weren't going to be up for eating.

He nodded, "We should discuss formations while we eat," Hirano declared. "We only have limitted space still in the ASLAV but we can at least have two people inside it," His grip tightened around the AR 10 as if he was making some difficult choice. "I'll ride in the humvee with this, and I'll handle the radio."

Well it was as good a plan as any. There was a thump against the wall. I snorted, it was probably the drunk people given we'd secured the entrances to the house fairly well. We didn't have a perfect line of sight around the house, but the door would take some effort to break down if it came to that, and the power was still working which meant the lights were on. I left the EBR up against the wall, and opened the door.

I walked out, and glanced down the stairs. Takashi glanced up from where he was cradling a clearly drunk, and blubbering Rei. I snorted, and flashed him a thumbs up sign, and then turned back around and walked back.

"Is it one of them?" Hirano asked, and I shook my head as I picked up my rifle.

"Nothing to worry about," I said leaning against the outside wall, "Just got to wait for dinner, so what do you think about what happened at the police station?"

He perked up, "Ah Shidou didn't stop bullies I wouldn't have gone with him. If they couldn't see he wasn't an appropriate leader thats their problem."

That was kind of harsh. "So, what about their chances to survive?" There had been a fairly largely group that had made it out of the school with us. Most of them had chosen to stay with Shidou, or maybe because of the bus. "Takuzo was pretty handy with that bat," That stupid towel he'd been sporting last I'd seen him though was an accident waiting to happen. He'd been the head of a small group when we'd run into them in the school.

"If they got away from Shidou they'd probably be okay, but even with him they might be alright since they're in the van." I nodded lifting my set of binoculars to look around. If we had been able to sort things out then we might have been able to do something more. "It'll give them a place to sleep, and that model gets really good gas mileage so if they're just driving around Tokunosu looking for supplies they should fine."

My fingers worked the zoom on the binoculars, "Yeah, we'll need to start looking for supplies tomorrow as well, food, and water, but also clothes,"

"Socks especially," Hirano said interjecting, "oh look at the bridge, that group there,"

I turned, yep big mob, "They look human," Which from one perspective was a good sign at least, of course there was no reason for them to be massing like that. I swept wide to the other side, to the other side which was obscured. I could see the bucket truck. Put two and two together, and it was probably a cordon. The question was why, or at least why was fire department doing the police's job. Then again the police station had been deserted.

-scene break-

It was a good thing we'd gotten prepared. At arrival + 11 hours and some change we rescued the next two additions to the group. A little girl named Alice, and a dog. Her dad had gotten stabbed by a bunch of survivors who were holed up in a house while he and Alice had been looking for a place to stay the night. Still the couple of hours we got to rest were a relief, and on top of that the supplies we had gotten from the apartment were a massive improvement to our situation.

We'd been in this situation less than an entire day, and my ASLAV already needed a good scrubbing down, but chances were that water that would be used would be to precious to use for something so trivial very soon. Still at just before ten, pm, local time we bugged out from Shizuka's girlfriend's apartment with all the supplies we could load.

Rescuing Alice had been an impromptu set up of collaborating efforts. Saeko had organized the loading of our remaining gear into the humvee while Hirano had clambered up the balcony to provide fire support for Takashi when he made his move. I'd driven the ASLAV, and Takashi had waited in place to grab the kid. As soon as we had her, and the Aslav blocked the zombies from trying to get through the gate to swarm Takashi. Hirano told the others and they loaded up in the Humvee once we were all ready to go. They shot off to join us with Shizuka at the wheel.

It probably wasn't the safest way to get clear, not with Shizuka having gotten drunk earlier, but there wasn't any helping it. It would have been nice to have spent the night resting at the house, but after all the noise we made rescuing Alice. It would have been a clusterfuck trying to hole back up in the house given that it'd been the middle of the night with sixty plus zombies all around us, and more probably coming from the noise we'd made, and that had been without having to fire the Bushmaster.

By morning we found a place to ford the river and cross to the other side, I still wasn't clear where exactly we were going, but the second day had dawned, and I was bushed. If we had to stay in town for more than a week it might at some point be worth it to go back and make sure we hadn't left anything important at the house. For now though the plan was try and find Saya's parents, and then we'd go after Rei, and Takashi's.

"What about after-"

There was still big black clouds of smoke billowing up from different parts of the city. Hopefully they'd die down instead of spreading, but I didn't know anything about fighting fires, much less in an environment like a big city. The zombies though... this was the New Normal. The old days were gone for good. "This is the new normal, and it started that first day in front of the school when you saw that zombie first bite that teacher. All we can do, and need to do now is keep surviving." I said as we looked out at what we could see of the city.

"His name was Teshima-sensei." Takashi stated.

Right... I shifted my position a little. Faintly I wondered if there were any survivors still in the school, or if any others had made it out. I couldn't even check now we were well away from the school. Some were hopefully alive, but they'd need food and water to survive. We all would in order to survive. Maybe there would be some semblance of order, but right now the city looked pretty messed up. Smoke was billowing, but on the plus side I could hear EMS sirens going off. That had to count for something that even a day into this they were working... or the sirens were still just going off and the cars were adandonned.

-scene break-


	4. Chapter 4 Something Like Normal

Something like normal

Helltanz's notes: I'll be sticking fairly close to canon's pacing for the first ten chapters (what comprises Arc 1) though noticeably things are happening differently. I'm really trying to highlight the differences in culture, which is where the Takagi estate will be really useful.

-scene break-

We'd gone and forded the river earlier, and were now sitting on the opposite bank. Tokunosu had several bridges, and at least two rivers feeding into the sea. I leaned against the ASLAV as we waited sipping my drink with all its tasty tasty caffeine. We'd sat down confirmed the plan as going to Saya's house, and then had breakfast. So now us guys were waiting for the girls to finish changing, something I had already done after we had stopped. I tossed a spare bag around for dirty clothes, and made sure my cammies were buried at the bottom of my clothes bag.

Hirano was, while we waited, running through the shotgun's basics with Takashi.

I patted Ishi on the shoulder, "Its alright, you're the smart one. You're the one who doesn't go running off into trouble," and he followed orders. I might have been tired of getting called sensei, but damn was I glad Ishi tended to listen immediately whenever I said something. "We'll get you a gun,"

He watched as I pulled one of the duffle bags out of the back of the ASLAV. "Sensei are you sure thats a good idea? I've never shot a gun before."

I looked at him, and then at Takashi. "Takashi hasn't either. The shotgun is good for these things, but I can't give you a shotgun," That was a deficient move on my part. The truth was most of what I had brought was designed around my expectations of people, and primarily of my native region, which was not Japan. I hadn't brought a shotgun. Truth be told I didn't like them it was for just that reason. It boiled down to really a personal bias. That meant the 22 caliber were the main things I had brought that would be the easiest, which meant you absolutely needed a head shot to put a zombie down. That fact meant we needed somewhere to practice, "Its not a big deal."

The five bags attempted to focus on addressing an individual type of supplies, and then whatever else could be crammed in. The first was dedicated to first aid supplies, meaning the near entirety of the bag had been pre event backed with medical supplies. The second was primarily foodstuffs and water. A third bag held tools, (Along with a great deal of other junk) and while the fourth bag held clothes and misc supplies. It was the last bag which held the bulk of my spare weapons.

What we'd gathered from Rika Minami's, as I had learned her name was, apartment was a tremendous improvement to our situation. The additional guns, particularly the two rifles, really helped, and I certainly wasn't going to complain about the food. It had however moved up the time table for when we needed to start practicing gun safety. Last night had demonstrated that, there had been a guy up the road with a shotgun who'd gotten torn apart probably because he'd gotten cocky and didn't think about what he was doing. We wanted to avoid stupid mistakes like that.

Hirano was right beside me the second I had pulled down the 'gun' dufflebag. I had five bags, and I'd told Hirano which were which. Takashi said something to Hirano gruffly, and I looked back at the two of them, "This is important," Hirano told him, a mite impatiently. "and besides you can't just expect to stick to your bat."

"Look we'll get you drilled on a gun when we get the chance," I told him They both needed the practice, but we really didn't need to waste the ammo for the shotgun. We also didn't need to be arguing right now, "for now just stick back around the nurse." Ishi, and Takashi both relaxed, "go ahead and look through there Kohta," I told the kid, he didn't need to be told twice. It wasn't like he'd mess anything up by doing it. "Ishi we'll teach you how to shoot, but for now," if he wasn't comfortable, now wasn't the time to push it. "For now just go keep watch for the Zed, and we'll sort something out," I told him as he clutched the impact baton. I watched him run up the hill, to stand beside the road.

Saeko had her stick, and Hirano had called dibs on the AR10 and handed the shotgun to Takashi, and then Rei had appropriated the Springfield. That left Takagi with the crossbow. It sucked we didn't have another one of those, or another shotgun.

As it was though we we're going to run out of shotgun ammo sooner than anything else. It wasn't like raiding the local sporting goods store was an option either. Principally since this was Japan and I had no idea where the nearest such store was, and trying to find it wasn't going to be easy at the best times.

Hirano was already trying to talk squad unit tactics to me. The main idea was emphasizing mobility and the ability to pick our engagements, and keeping the zed at a distance. The first idea revolved around shooting from our vehicles, briefly engaging and then withdrawing. It had merit the Iraqi insurgency had done it to harass coalition forces. The second idea was a bit more old school with us staying a little more stationary behind homemade defenses. If we could find somewhere were it was ideal to do that it might be worth doing.

I looked over at the Humvee. That was another thing we needed to figure out who was riding with who, because the Hummer only had four seats. Shizuka was obviously going to be driving, just like I was going to be driving the ASLAV. I'd really prefer the kid, Alice, getting in the Humvee so she could buckle up, but she wouldn't take up much room either way.

Takashi, Rei, Takagi, Ishi, Saeko, Hirano. Five people meaning three were getting to ride with me in the ASLAV. "Kohta," He turned, setting the Glock 26 he'd been examining down, "I want you to ride shotgun in the Humvee with the radio." He didn't complain or object, even though he probably thought my 'amphibious reconnaissance vehicle' was considerably more tank than the armored humvee.

"I understand." He responded, going back to checking the contents of the bag individually. In hindsight I should have brought a bolt action, the bag was long enough to fit one, but I'd chosen to bring extra ammo, which wasn't a bad idea in itself.

That left at max two seats in the back... god damn it, really the Humvee needed the guys with guns in it. So that meant Rei, and Takagi needed to be the other two. This would leave Saeko, which was not so bad by any extent, but also with Saya. Oh well it was for the best. "We also need the girls to get a fresh change of clothes, you guys too." I added, a bag full of clothes pretty much and I didn't have anything to really fit these people... well didn't fit well.

Takashi looked over, "So I'm riding in the Humvee, then?" He didn't seem to mind.  
"Yeah remember to buckle up, its better to avoid conflict remember most of our space is in the ASLAV, which is a bitch to open up." I added a little harsher than I intended, and it was a slight exaggeration. It was true we had set a pretty bad example yesterday by riding on the top of the thing, but that was because we really hadn't had a choice. Now though was different, and it certainly wasn't worth risking injury. "We're also going to move some more 308 ammo to the humvee," I paused. The discovery of the Rika's guns should have prompted to do that sooner. "lets go ahead and do that." Having the Humvee really did help us a lot since it allowed us to free up space in the ASLAV, which meant people could actually sit down on the actual seats.

Hirano zipped up the dufflebag looking pretty happy. "if we can find somewhere to hole up, and entrench ourselves while gathering supplies we'll be set." He commented.

I grabbed an empty bag and started grabbing boxes of 308 plinking ammunition. Ishi had had some nonsensical idea of not wanting to take one of the pistols I carried on me, 'oh sensei I don't want to take one of your guns, you might need them.' I was only carrying like three of them, and relying mainly on my MP5. I had hoped that showing him the guns in the dufflebag would help, but he just wasn't ready just yet. Hopefully he'd get over it soon enough, and there were almost enough Glocks to go around.

"We also need to see about finding a gas station." Hirano reminded. "We can grab food, and water there, and then maybe some spare clothes as well."

Takagi nodded, "We probably should get fuel while we're there."

Yeah that wouldn't hurt either. We'd need to find extra gas cans though. I looked over, it seemed like the girls were finally done getting dressed, so we could get moving. "Alright," Good the sooner we were away from a natural choke like the bridge two hundred meters from us the better.  
"My house is the closest," Takagi reminded, "I'm sure they'll be well prepared for that." She paused for a moment, "We'll have to talk with my papa immediately he'll know what to do in this kind of situation."

She seemed pretty confident about that. I really hoped she wasn't wrong, "Right then Hirano go take shotgun," That wasn't going to change. I wanted him handling the radio, and Takashi still was gripping the Ithaca even if he was loath to use it. "Okay the humvee will take lead and you can direct Shizuka, and..." I don't have any idea who thought letting Rei have the M1A was a good idea because really it was not ideal as far as first rifles went. It was only a matter of time too till she complained it was heavy because everyone did after walking with it. Not that we had such a rifle for this situation and as far as things went the less said about what I thought about her idea of using it as a spear the better. I waved Ishi down the hill. "Kohta will manage the radio. If we stumble along a gas station or a clothes shop along the way we need to stop and get supplies if its not overrun. You guys need to get changes of clothes,"

It was a little before noon when we all piled into the vehicles, and Shizuka started up the incline after I made sure the radio was still working. It wasn't like I expected them not to work I was just a bit paranoid. The humvee, and ASLAV had built in radios, but it seemed like they had different preset channels and I didn't see the point of trying to figure that out right this minute. That'd be something to do when we bunkered down for the night.

Last night had been pretty tiring most because of sheer what the fuck was going on than anything else. We really needed to find somewhere to bunker down. As it was the boys would probably pass out before I would, but I was still exhausted, and I was the one driving the damn 'truck'. Breakfast MREs might have sucked, more so taste wise than normal, but the drinks they came with had so much wonderful glorious extra caffeine in them it about, almost, made up for it.

Last night had also been a good summary of our situation, and our problems. We did need to be more careful, as it was we were going to draw plenty of attention if only because of our vehicles not to mention our weapons. We only had so many supplies, and we couldn't save everyone, but we probably should make the attempt when it was possible. We'd watched more than a few people get killed last night. Some of them had even been armed, with real, meaning guns, weapons. It would have been nice to have been able to take their weapons, but it had been a risk we couldn't have taken at the time.

When Hirano had been on look out and started shouting about spotting Alice he'd gotten Takashi's attention immediately, and they'd dragged me into it. It wasn't to say I hadn't wanted to go, but Takashi had been way to eager to rush to his probable death by running off half cocked. Saeko had pointed that much out to him, both before and after. He hadn't even taken the shotgun when he did rush to save the kid.

"I think we should consider our options carefully. We may be able to get supplies from Saya's home, but we should definitely consider trying to acquire them along the way once we move on." Saeko added.

It really seemed like they were all finally getting it. That was a good thing. "We'll need a plan but yeah that the basics." I agreed calling back to them from the driver's seat, before telling Ishi to get up top and look up ahead. We hadn't seen a single damn zed... or any other survivors for that matter, and it was getting unnerving. I grabbed the radio, and rang the people in the M1025. "Kohta tell Shizuka to slow down, something isn't right," I grunted before telling Ishi to get back down.

Given the lack of bodies it wasn't likely for there to be snipers, but I wanted to wait a minute. A few minutes rolled by and there were still not a single person, and no corpses either. We finally came to a total stop, and I handed a leather case to Ishi. He went back up to the commander's cupola and took a look around with the binoculars that were in the case.

"What do you think?" Saeko asked after we started rolling along at a slower pace through the residential zone.

My face set, "No idea, something is up though," The lack of air traffic was one thing. Hell it was understandable given fuel requirements. It was the lack of foot mobiles that was fucking weird in this situation.

Ishi called in a few minutes later. Yeah there weren't any back that way because they were all milling up around ahead. "They're getting thicker," I grabbed at the radio, "Shizuka get in the other lane, and be ready to put the humvee in reverse, and back up." I craned my head back, "Ishi tell me what you see?" He described the area up ahead.

Yeah there had to be some kind of barricade we weren't seeing up ahead, and if we didn't pay attention we'd run right into it. As it was the zombies, according to Ishi were real thick, getting denser the farther up, but then all of a sudden there just weren't any.

"If we fire the cannon it will probably just attract more of them," Hirano commented over the radio as peaked out the top of the humvee.

Yeah that was true enough, and might damage the barricade... whatever it was, "Yeah," But the zombies were coming our way now. I grabbed the radio and called the Humvee as Shizuka moved into position, "Kohta tell Shizuka to reverse," Time to put his idea to work, "pull back and then get on with sniping. We'll keep it up till they get to close, and then we'll move, but there has to be some kind of barricade up ahead, that we can't see real well at a distance so we can't got straight ahead. I put the ASLAV in reverse and backed it up to beside a streetlight, and put it in park.

I had made sure to hand out ear plugs last night just in case. There were enough of them, of Zed to kill quickly then we'd figure out what to do, or we'd run them over or something. Running them over though was less than ideal, and could damage the humvee if we weren't careful. It didn't really matter how we dealt with them as long as we avoided getting close.

If nothing else we could just back up, and turn the corner, and keep doing that. Sure it would burn fuel, but it wasn't like there were any other options I could think of. Going around, and trying to find another way to Saya's house was one option, but this barricade had to have been put up by someone. That didn't mean it had to be Saya's folks, but someone, most likely from this neighborhood, had done it. I stuck my head out the driver's cupola... not even half a kilometer something was keeping them out.

-scene break-

It turned out there were some kind of thin high strength wire, or cable, stretched criss cross out across the road blocking the way. As we correctly surmised there would be more Zombies coming towards the gun shots, but that was why Ishi was on look out. More correctly he had been watching our rear while we reloaded the rifle magazines for Hirano and my guns.

We also were chocking the scores up for team 308. If we were back home, where I knew I'd have access to reloading dyes I'd have been policing my brass for reuse, but given the situation that didn't seem to be worth the effort at the moment. This seemed especially true since space was at a premium at the moment.

Still the wire, or whatever, had to have been put up by someone. So obviously someone was fucking prepared. That was made all the more clear when Takagi's mom arrived... in the most retarded bunch of equipment I had ever laid eyes on. Of course maybe it wasn't so retarded since it worked, but by that point we'd dealt all the zombies because we'd been able to take our time while they came towards us. We'd also burned a decent bit of ammo, speaking at least with regards to shooting.

As it turned out though the Takagi family had managed to pull their shit together in a truly impressive fashion. Apparently they were, in addition to apparently being loaded, the head family of some ultranationalist group or whatever. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but they were set up to survive. The whole complex was immense. I didn't even want to guess how much this house alone was worth never mind the furnishings. It was a pretty classy blend of east meeting west. I took a seat in one of the fancy dark wood chairs.

"I suppose it was fortune that you happened to be there," She said taking a seat behind the desk, it'd been cleared of any semblance of normal paper work in favor of munipal maps detailing Tokunosu's layout, "when the school came under attack. My daughter and her friends are lucky for that, particularly since you're willing to go out again to help look for the other parents, but what will you do after that?"

Mrs. Takagi had already explained that Tokunosu got its power, and water from a damn north of the city, and that the anti terrorist unit station to protect the damn had already been evacuated sometime yesterday. I didn't question how they knew that fact. "Right now all we can do is survive,"

"Improvise, adapt and overcome you mean." She stated pushing the map a little closer... she'd been talking to Hirano, he'd picked through my wilson bag, most likely to make that statement, "My husband is presently preparing for our departure from here but we will only take those with the will to live,"

I took the hint and looked a little closer at the map. Without context I had no real idea what I was looking at, but if they were talking about leaving here then they'd need supplies. So these were probably stores, or gas stations or something along those lines. "I haven't made a choice like that yet, but are they being armed going to be a problem?"

"Does it concern you?"

Now came the problematic part of all this, I didn't want to offend Saya's mom, but at the same time I kind of needed to make this clear. "Yes it does. I'm sure that the people under your," She corrected me that Souchirou was the one in charge, but I hadn't met him yet, "command have good intentions, but as it is I've got no reason to trust these people with firearms we've gathered yet."

"Why is that?"

Of course she had no reason to accept my statement at face value, "Kohta Hirano has been trained by the Army, trying to disarm him would be a waste of talent. Rei, and Takashi are going to have to learn because we're going to have to find their parents so I wouldn't support taking their gear away from them without a reason. Don't misunderstand I'm not opposed to sharing ammo, but we're still looking for their parents."

-scene break-

I leaned against the side of my ASLAV. This place was as good as any to hole up in. I didn't know whether Takagi Saya would stay here or not. It really wasn't my business but it'd probably attract the focus of the others. The power grid was working, as was the water, but like Mrs Takagi had said that was pumped from a dam up the way. One that Souichirou intended to secure. So I'd been more than happy to take her parents up on the opportunity to take a hot shower, because as it was it was only a matter of time before the grid failed. I knew it was coming unless it could be secured.

Ishi was reading one of the books, or trying to, that I'd brought. His English was actually pretty decent, of course all of them were pretty smart. For now we had a little bit of time to relax, to take a breather until we went out again to find Rei, and Takashi's parents.

Right now we were parked out side the house. In front of the house ,and in front of one another. I had the Bushmaster pointed at the gate... just in case. It was probably just paranoia, but as safe as things were chances are someone was going to get complacent. For the moment at least there were at least three layers of barricades between us and masses. It wasn't going to be me if I could help it, but sometimes you just slipped up. Right now though we'd spent the last few hours relaxing in the relative safety of the compound.

We'd already cleared out the trash from the emptied ammo boxes from having to reload yesterday. It was still ironic I'd figured that I'd use the nine mil ammo up so much faster than 308, and the opposite was proving true. I wondered if the Ultra Nationalists had a range set up, not anything necessarily fancy, but practical for shooting at the zombies while remaining safe.

They obviously had guns, but then they probably didn't really have the ammo to spare for daily training. I was regretting not bringing a nine mil carbine in my bag. Everyone agreed I was prepared, but there were things I could have changed. I hadn't managed to convince Ishi to pick up a gun yet, and Takashi hadn't even used his shotgun yet... then again the M1A hadn't gotten fired either.

Overall it was probably a good thing in some way that they hadn't had to shoot something just yet, but sooner or later they'd have to use those weapons. Well at least we were still good on shotgun ammo.

I sighed, and Ishi looked up. "Sensei?"

It didn't even get a rise out of me this time, not right now, "Might want to see about rounding up the others," I knew Rei and Takashi had gone off somewhere, and Saeko had been talking to Mrs Takagi. I kind of wanted to know if Saya was staying here, and if she could keep Alice here. That kid didn't need to be out in this mess not if this was safety right here.

"Alright, just wait here." he ran off.

Like I was going anywhere. I might have trusted Mrs. Takagi but so far it was just her, and all our supplies were loaded up between these two vehicles. Amongst those were the kid's guns, well besides the AR 10 that Kohta was carrying around. I was surprised something hadn't been said when we first arrived then again maybe they were too scared. Of course sooner or later someone was going to have to say something about the tank. The guns were one thing, it was probably just they accepted that the situation was what it was.

Right now the situation even a few hundred meters away on the street there were zombies gathering and milling about. I could understand the Right wing guys had limited ammo, but just letting them mill about struck me as a bad idea. That and we needed somebody in our group to drill with the M1A at the very least. It was kind of the other reason I'd sent Ishi to go find Rei and Takashi... they all three of them needed to get some practice in. At the very least get them to go through a box each while Kohta and I did over watch.

It was probably the kind of thing I should ask Mrs. Takagi. I'd have to see about that. Yeah three boxes of 308. A single box was one, standard size, magazine worth. It would be a good start. I checked my watch, we'd been here since about noon. It was about three in the afternoon, and we would be spending the night.

One of the guys waved at me. I waved back, and he went back to what he'd been doing. From what I'd gathered not everyone was here right now. Apparently a part of the group had left in their vehicles to go out and gather supplies... thats were Mr. Takagi must have been. I leaned back it was a good idea, we needed to be doing that. So far we hadn't seen any examples of wide scale looting, which was amazing in this scenario.

I also needed to take the time to go through my own equipment. Of course that meant I needed somewhere private just to prevent, or try to prevent, any undue conflict. The real issue seemed to be arming the high schoolers. I knew at some point that some kind of argument was going to start. I looked back up, and saw Kohta marching up, as in like parade marching. I guess it was his way of coping, or trying to.

It probably helped we had an M1025, and the ASLAV. There was no denying the kid was a good shot, and apparently personally instructed by a former member of Army Special Forces. I didn't really want to find out why his parents had let him go through that. "Hey Kohta can you sew?"

"I can, the ability to maintain ones gear in the field is an important part..."

Oh god he was doing it again. It wasn't like he was wrong sewing was easily one of the best skills to pick up for survival. "Thats good," I responded interjecting. It would help with maintaining our clothes in case they got torn, or if we needed to fix a bag, or something else. "When we get the chance we're going to make sure Takashi, Ishi, and Rei all get some time to practice with a rifle. We also need to find out if Saya is going to be staying her when we go looking for Rei, and Takashi's parents." I was going to go with them, Shizuka, and Saya could stay here and such.

I had been wondering why Hirano had military tutoring. Takashi thus far hadn't seemed worried about his dad, who was 'always at work', but Hirano's parents were out of the country. In fact he'd said that his father was looking for some special batch diamonds in Amsterdam for some Jewelry project that he was working on for one of his clients. It made sense it seemed like he came from a fairly well off family so they'd be able to pay for his interests.

"I don't supposed you were trained in demolition work if we could clear an area we could create a clear field and set up a dead man's land." He meant like from World War I, "The Takagi's have a large stock pile of dynamite here, and we could probably get our hands on razor wire."

I shook my head, "I'm not EOD, little out of my area of specialty." if the Takagi's had explosives I didn't want to be anywhere near them. I liked being intact. Of course if they had explosives they had probably been intended for construction of some sort, which meant hopefully they had an engineer as apart of their faction -thing. Hopefully one who did in fact know the safe and correct way in case we had to demolish a building.

"Ah well it was just a thought, so about shooting?" He asked unslinging his AR 10. "We're going to ask Saya's mom right." I looked at him... if he was poking at what I thought he had a point. Saya would probably do well to start learning how to shoot now from a relative safe vantage point as well, but it was probably better just to make sure her mom was okay with it.

Ironically the thing I was worried about didn't happen, people complaining that was about the guns, until after we got Mrs. Takagi's permission, and we'd gone and come back. Then again that was just the way of things. I pulled myself up on top of the hull. We had a place to bunker down at least for the night, so I'd need to go through some stuff.

That was how Z-day +2 went more or less. As time went on new routines developed. The old normal became just nostalgia as we got more used to all of this... this New Normal.

-scene break-


	5. Chapter 5 What can you do

What can you do?

-scene break-

We didn't start practicing until the third day. There were just other things we had to deal with like getting the chance to rest. Hirano, and Takashi... and even Saya had brought up the reminder... the warning that the 'adults' were in charge. Takashi had been trying to help move supplies, and for Saya these were her father's employees, or subordinates.

The fact was a little hard to deal with on its own. I'd been here, in Japan, in the zombie apocalypse, three days now. The fact remained however, and so far the power was holding up. Well the first practice had went well, we probably needed to spend more than twenty rounds a person, but for the moment... it just wasn't time.

Talking just the three of them into had been hard enough. I hadn't been intentionally excluding the other members of the group, and I did have another rifle, but sixty rounds, twenty per person, took time to go through instructing someone who'd never shot before.

Saeko hadn't minded, but Saya had gotten pretty mad at being left out. Apparently she was having issues with this whole thing, including dealing with here parents. Her parents had set up a safe zone, and really saying she was having issues was understating things. Her mother had said after we gotten back it'd probably be the kind of lesson that she needed to go through.

I was back to leaning against the wall, "She's been at it for a while." I glanced at Saeko. I meant Saya who had been yelling at Takashi for the last couple of minutes in the house. As far as I knew Rei was supposed to be watching Alice at the moment.

"She's insecure about what we should do," the swordswoman remarked, "The matter of this has her all concerned." I nodded, we'd seen her dad on approach at the head of a convoy bringing gathered supplies. Other survivors were starting to gather here as well, some had arrived yesterday at various times during the day and night. Even going out in the morning hadn't really done much but to temporarily clear the zed problem, but it had given some much needed practice. "What about you?"

I shrugged, "I'm holding up, what about you?" I asked back in response.

"This will be a trying time, but at least she knows her parents are alright," Talk about deflecting the question, Saeko smiled, "We'll have to make our own way, and be prepared for the worst. Its good your going with them to show them how to shoot."

My eyebrow quirked. It might have been a good thing, but Rei was easily the most willing to learn followed by Ishi, which was mainly because he was so damn obedient. Takashi still wasn't that keen on using a gun. Still she was right it was a good thing, "Hirano's helping to, of course ,"

The truth was though we didn't have enough 308 rifles to arm them. Not all of us at one time. If it came to it I was going to have to give them other guns to practice on... no as it was I needed to do that sooner rather than later. We didn't have the ammo to train on the shotgun, but we were going to have to start using it once we left here. It did make the load out fairly clear, if Takashi was going to be hanging on to the shotgun he'd be riding in the humvee most likely. Hirano too for that matter, he could snipe from the top of the Humvee, and all that.

Ishi walked up, but he'd obviously seen we'd been talking so didn't say anything immediately. It was probably just him being polite not saying anything so he wouldn't be interupting.

We'd dragged Ishi, and Rei, and Takashi this morning, and then they'd come willingly to the practice after we'd had lunch. It had been a little after that Saya had jumped down our throats for not including her, and a little after that Mr. Takagi had gotten back.

We were planning to go again in several hours at some point before it got too dark... I was going to let Takashi sit this practice out and ask Saya along, maybe it depended on how things went with Mr. Takagi. He seemed to have things under control here so hopefully we'd be able to get on with finding the other parents tomorrow.

We heard it, the shouting, before we saw it. They weren't even that far away. Kohta had probably been coming back from cleaning the M1A and his AR 10. His, because until I saw Shizuka's friend it was Kohta's gun. I grit my teeth, and bunch of guys surrounding him. "go get the others, and Mrs Takagi." I ground out to Ishi and Saeko. We hadn't had a chance to talk to Mr. Takagi, and well she'd said come to her if there were any problems.

The truth was I'd expected this, scared people did things like this. Hell I was surprised something like this hadn't been pulled sooner. We'd gone shooting twice today, and even with the power running, and all the noise of the people you could still hear the gunshots. We were well armed... and not everyone was, because Japan.

We'd been palling about by the vehicles near the entrance of the house waiting for Takagi, and Takashi to finish their little verbal swordfight. Saeko grabbed my sleeve, "We should consider what we're getting into."

The best way to deal with this was talk everyone down. The best way to do that was by going to get Mrs. Takagi to try and talk these chuckleheads down. They were the ones picking a fight, but truth be told this situation was bound to happen at some point. "I mean it go get Mrs. Takagi, and see about making sure the others are ready to leave... if we have to." I really didn't want it to be like that, but fuck this was a long time coming I guess. "Hey!" I shouted striding forward. I wasn't going to get within punching distance.

The whole world had gone to hell. This zombie apocalypse had destroyed the normal orderly life everyone was used to living. That was just a fact. I might not have been entirely keen on them, on high school students, being armed, but I had accepted it as a necessary thing. Not everyone was inclined to agree obviously. It would likely have been the same world wide, because it was human nature to do stuff like this. Hiding behind claims like kids shouldn't be hoarding weapons, or we just want to protect people may have had some validity. At the same time... even if psychologically I could understand this it didn't mean I had to like it.

Hirano saw me first. That wasn't saying much given he'd probably been walking to us after he'd finished cleaning the guns to begin with. The Takagi house, more accurately estate, was large, but not so large that you couldn't pay attention to something happening. What made the estate impressive was the the house, and complex walls. Those were in this situation, the walls, really the most impressive factor.

In short there was no hiding this kind of dickery. Not from me, or Saeko, or any one else who was taking refuge behind the walls of the Takagi estate, which in a way made all this that much worse in a way. Fear made people do things, fear motivated people. In the best case scenario nothing would come of this, and Mrs Takagi could talk all this down.

"Leave Kohta alone," That was when I heard it, the sh-wick of the impact baton extending. Fuck now he picks the time to grown a spine and not listen to me. Ishi had flicked his wrist and extended the baton. He didn't have a gun, not on him. Saeko hadn't left either... fuck, and Takashi didn't have a radio either, balls so there was no calling him to go get Mrs. Takagi.

"Kid, oh gaijin-" Yeah that was about as far as he went before he realized I had a gun. I think he just saw it and he stopped talking.

I might have been prepared to shoot him, if it absolutely had to come to that but it, the MP5, was still resting at ease on its sling against my chest. "Ishi go get Kohta," I told him, "Saeko go over there with him please." I didn't get how a bunch of guys circling Kohta didn't get more attention than it was, but now all of a sudden we were starting to develop an audience. Some of the other people who were taking shelter here were starting to look and point. "Kohta give Ishi the Springfield."

We stood there for a minute as Ishi took the Springfield. I didn't even know if the magazine had been loaded after he'd cleaned them. Not that Ishi was pointing it at them, I didn't even know if he'd be able to. Hirano if he snapped out of it might, and Saeko probably wouldn't have a problem, but Ishi... I couldn't say for sure whether he'd be able to make that jump.

"What is going on here?" A voice demanded as more of the black uniform clad people pushed through the throng of people who'd started to gather.

Generally doing that kind of thing is stupid, its a good way to get people shot. Seriously jumping into a Mexican standoff by loudly shouting questions tended to make people do stupid shit. Ishi tightened his grip on the M1A as the don of the organization, Mr Takagi, showed up. Fuck. I really wanted to back up, I wanted to tell Kohta to back up. Shooting Mr. Takagi seemed like a really bad idea never mind he was Saya's dad, but he was also the first competent adult we'd seen in three days.

I lowered my hand away from the pistol grip. None of the guys here were armed... well discounting the fact Saya's dad had a fucking sword. I knew that some of the Ultra nationalists did have guns, but these ones didn't. The armed ones must have been stationed around the outermost barricade, or elsewhere on patrol.

The guys who'd been crowding Kohta started getting loud trying to be heard over one another, I'd guess. At least for all that he was loud, and showy, and ooh look at me chop zed heads he was reasonable. Competent and reasonable geez we'd lucked up now if only his lackeys weren't fucking dicks.

Souchirou Takagi raised a hand glowering at everyone present, "That will be enough, order must be maintained if we are to survive." He'd better not start into that damn fight speech again.

-scene break-

"So thats how we ended up here," I finished, before sipping the tea. It was a good thing Mr. Takagi was reasonable... well you know for being crazy prepared ultranationalist guy. Having tea had certainly been nice, as was being able to relax after that fuss. Of course if he expected me to know anything about tea ceremony culture he was shit out of luck.

Mr. Takagi had gotten everyone to relax. At that point he suggested we sit down for tea, and as he put it an important conversation. and well sent Saya to try and talk down some situation that was developing. I'd slightly revised my opinion of him after that. Sure it might have been some weird culturally acceptable quirk, but calling his daughter worthless seemed a tad on the dickish side to me. Of course he'd also sent Saya off to deal with some of the people who'd come here to take refuge who were well... In all bluntness it was like a bunch of stupid pills had been shoved down people's throats all of a sudden.

That had basically let us split back up again, safely I was hoping. Hopefully there wouldn't be an incidents, and Saeko and I had gone off to a more traditional, that was to say Japanese, part of the estate. The Takagi estate's real demonstration of their wealth was the layout of buildings. The room we settled into have tea looked, from my understanding, like a very nice dojo... hell it probably was one. It had been in there that we'd started to swap what had happened. He'd passed a, really fancy, sword off to Saeko, once we'd gotten inside.

He'd left early yesterday morning, with a collection of members from his organization, to begin collecting vital supplies for the compound, and gather people. Amongst the items he'd brought back was a large fuel truck. They'd also loaded their vans with food and water. After he'd finished we'd, or I had started to recount our own story.

Saeko nodded in confirmation of my retelling of how we had come to get here yesterday, and of how we had all met up. Mr. Takagi nodded, "I see, and do you know what happened to this teacher and the other students who you were with?"

"No, we haven't seen them sense we split up." I admitted. Shidou didn't seem like a moron so they were probably okay. Well as long as he could keep the stupid in line. I looked over, through the window, to where Saya was talking to the Crazy Fuckers. I didn't even feel bad for calling them that. Principally because that one bitch who was egging them on had been giving me the evil eye since she first shown up at the gate wanting to be let in. No wanting was the wrong word, demanding would have been more accurate.

Saeko nodded, and picked up from there "We split ways at Hisashi station, in fact we left as soon as we figured the best way to ride safely. By working together we survived and were able to rescue Alice as well."

That was about the time the bitch started shouting at Saya. I rolled my eyes, and didn't even try and say anything. It would just cause more trouble. I asked to be excused, before turning to Saeko, "Hey lets go link up with the whole group. I don't trust that bunch of crazies not to do something stupid."

I really doubted they'd get so out of hand they'd endanger us. It wasn't like there was a danger in shouting either, not with the multiple layers of defense around the area. Just in case though it might be a good idea to know where everyone was.

Ichi had the M1A still, which I still wasn't sure was loaded. He, and Hirano were with Saya. They were also the close obviously so getting together with them was probably good concentration. It probably be a good idea to get Takashi the Ithaca. He and Rei could cover Shizuka, and Alice. It might even be worth it to pull the Ruger out of the duffle bag. Then again probably not such a good idea considering the only person who had shot it was me.

"We should try to avoid escalating things further." Yeah that was a good idea, but there was a chance that it would escalate on its own. It was still kind of bad it needed to be said. "We should be considering what, and where we go from here carefully." Mr Takagi had said the pretty much exact thing. People needed to make their own choices. He'd also related that there armed collections of survivors who out there who in a 'frenzy'. "We'll have to consider that there..."I leaned back, and then straightened, "We need to go get Takashi, and Rei, and-"

That was about as far as I got before Shizuka nearly bowled Saeko and I over. The important thing though was she was holding her cell phone, and blabbering about her girlfriend... the one whose house we raided and gathered the guns from. She was at least alive that was a good sign.

Then the lights of the house went out, "fuck me." I blinked... poor choice of words considering the company. Contrary to popular misconception you can generate an EMP without a nuclear detonation happening... hell the Russians had tested one of their missiles with an EMP warhead a few years back. However it was however the one thing assured to cause question was who the fuck thought it was a good idea to pop a nuke, my bet, and I didn't have any evidence too it, was the North Koreans. "That was an EMP effect we need to get ready to go," I stated loudly, "go back to Takashi and Rei," I started heading down the front stairs and grabbed my radio, that was clipped on the front of my vest, "Kohta,"

"Uh yeah,"

In a way the cold war, and preparing for it was good for a lot of things, both sides had invested in shielding their, military, radios against EMP. So nowadays you could buy versions from places like Israel, Russia, or even Sweeden such. "Get Ishi, and Saya move to the vehicles ASAP." I thought he'd better appreciate the urgency. Still I was regretting like hell I hadn't brought certain choice extras. I was going to keep regretting it probably, but at this point it was time to unpack the other guns, and put the ones that needed to be assembled together. I looked out towards the gate, "Kohta as soon as we get there make sure the humvee works if it doens't get behind the ASLAV and keep your guns pointed at the gate." I turned to Saeko. The M1025 probably wasn't properly NBC shielded, but it was probably fine. If it wasn't thought we were probably going to have to pull everything out, and we didn't really have room for all of that "We're probably going to have to pull everything out of the Humvee, if its not working."

It had slipped my mind that the actual EMP effects on motor vehicles tended to be hilariously overstated. The cars that weren't running at the time of the blast ran fine even after the high altitude detonation, and hours later while we were resting that it turned out most vehicles were fine after an EMP though they might need some minor shop work as a result of the systems surging if they hadn't been off.

Saeko and I stopped beside the ASLAV, and I glanced at her, "We're getting you a pair of pants," I opened the ASLAV's rear, "Where we at Kohta?"

"I needed to reset the battery but it'll run," He stated wiping some car grease off his face. I was glad he already knew that without me having to find that was all you needed to do hours later in some emergency guide issued by the DoD, "where is Shizuka-sensei?"

I nodded, oh that was good news, "Getting Takashi and Rei,"

"Well we've got an issue," He pointed towards the gate, which was wide open, and there was a bus up beside it, on the interior side... The damn school minibus well shit they'd made it. Unfortunately they were also just sitting there just inside the gate.

I turned to him. "Just make sure everything is ready," I pulled the weapons bag, "When you see Takashi give him the Ithaca," I pulled out the FN FAL para out of the bag, and locked the stock into place. It was pretty plain especially compared to the stuff we'd gotten from Shizuka's girlfriend's house, "if it comes to it pass this Rei," She didn't have any experience on it, which was the reason I didn't want it to come to that but it was in 308 so that was a plus.

"Sensei I can use this, and -"

That was as far as Ishi got before I set the FAL bayonet down beside it, he was always trying to be helpful so if that was what he wanted to do because the FAL was kind of on the heavy side. "its up to you then. I'm going to see about getting the gate closed." Shidou was busy talking up one of the guys when I got there... "Close the gate,"

"What?" the Ultra nationalist turned away from Shidou and looked at me. He looked back like it wasn't a big deal. Then when I continued stuck his hand in his pocket.

"We need to close the gate, so give me a hand with it." I reiterated.

He looked at me kind of funny, and pulled the door opener out of his pocket, "What do you mean we can just press the button and-" He stopped when puching the button didn't do anything... and then pressed it again.

"There has been a nuclear strike." The last thing I wanted to do was start a panic so explaining this calmly was the main way to prevent that pretend this was not fucking insane. "An EMP has short circuited most unshielded electronics in the local area, now lets close the gate." He swallowed and started shouting at the other guys. That was about the time some body came running towards the gate... damn it. I could put two and two together to get four, all jokes aside. Most likely they'd opened the way for the minibus and hadn't set them back up. "Kohta get over here and get ready to shoot!" I yelled, and noticed mr Takagi waiting at the entrance to the Dojo nodding. "The rest of you push this gate closed. HEAVE." The US military, particularly the Army and Marines, had competitions where you pushed a fully loaded Humvee. It was a teamwork excercise.

We let the guy running in through the door down the way from the vehicle gate. I glanced at the zombies, before running back to the ASLAV. Communications were down, because they'd been relying on cell phones to communicate... whose towers had just been swatted by the EMP.

Takashi and Rei had gotten back with Shizuka and Alice was in tow. "Whats going on?" it made since they wouldn't recognize what had happened, and why would they. Saya had because she was book smart, and judging from the way Mr. Takagi was looking aroundsomething he'd been prepared for. Hirano had also figured it out, probably from his training in America under the Army. The others though why would they need to know the acute signs differentiating this from just a generic power grid failure.

"Hirano will explain get ready to shoot," I shouted at him, "I'm going to move the ASLAV against the gate, and we're going to clear the zombies." He didn't even complain when Hirano pushed the shotgun into his hands, which was a distinct improvement. I saw that Ishi had given the M1A to Rei. It hardly mattered now as I was clambering into the ASLAV and the heavy diesel engine rumbled. Fuck yeah NBC shielding meant I didn't even need to reset the engine to start it.

Hirano was already clambering up out of the commander's cupola when I put the armored vehicle in park and had swung his AR 10 around towards the gate. "There are kind of a lot of them, one in my pocket," He announced as I climbed up beside him. There was a bang, and I was glad I tended to be wearing ear protection most days.

At least none of them had gotten in, and they'd keep straining against the gate, which they weren't going to be able to push down, not with thirteen tons of armor parked sideways up against it. His first shot was soon joined by mine, and then Rei, and Ishi. Takashi clambered up the ASLAV. It was then Mr Takagi started barking orders but I couldn't hear him I could just see him in my peripheral vision. We were in a shooting gallery. The gate was straining against their weight, and even if the bolts were weakening. I was so close to gate that it had scratched the paint the side of my armored vehicle... they were scratching my paint job. Honestly that shit pissed me off.

Ironic the kind of stuff that got to you in these situations.

-scene break-

It took almost an hour. We burned through all the preloaded magazines for the AR 10, the FAL, and the M1, and my M14 and then we had to reload. Takashi and then Ishi got stuck with that, because they ran out of ammo, that they had on them, first. They weren't the only ones the nationalists had a real mish mash of weapons with them, which of course I had known. They had even brought out the dynamite just in case which in my accounting of things after the shooting stopped seemed a bit much, which was why I was glad it hadn't come to that.

After we finally clambered down from the ASLAV I looked around. We were exhausted, that had been way to much... but unlike the school we had held the line. This place was safe. "Hirano we need to reset the engines on their cars. Ishi can keep watch" Ishi was already clamoring up into the commander's cupola with the binoculars to keep watch out just in case. At least some of the nationalists had 7.62s. I had seen at least one M14, an older version, and one Mini 14.

Well I wanted to say I was being generous, but I really did need to free up some space. We pulled a whole line of boxes out and set them out, and then we reloaded our own guns. I could see the looks being cast at the ammo. This whole time we had been here I'd been careful with showing what was in the back of my ASLAV.

"Will you be leaving now?"

I looked at the only reasonable leader figure we'd found, "If its all the same to you we'll leave tomorrow," I told him, "Help you reset the barricade."  
"We should do that now then," He said with a stern nod. Yeah he probably had a point with that there wasn't really any point in waiting. If we waited we'd only have to wade through more zombies. Not to mention we'd run the risk of other problems.

Especially not with the way Rei was looking at Shidou and she had a loaded gun, and way to much adrenaline... and Shidou was walking right towards us. I nodded, "Lets do that," I turned, "Ishi you see anything."

"Think we got them all sensei," I was too tired to complain, "Should I come down?"

I waved at him, "No stay there, Takashi..." I pulled a Glock 26 out of my tote it had an extended grip magazine, "We've got plenty of nine mil ammo, use this if you need to. I'll get you a bad to carry ammo," It was high time I'd given him a bag any way, he needed it for the extra shotgun ammo that we had. He'd run out of ammo the earliest because he'd only had just the ammo on the Ithaca itself. I left Hiarno to explain the glock to him.

It took some effort to get the gate open, but Mr Takagi brought a hand picked group of his guys, all of them with guns, along with us and Ishi was on look out. Takashi stayed back with Saya, and Rei, and Shizuka and Alice where they were waiting with the humvee. We were going to put the baricade back up, and then we'd plan our next move.

It was a mess up ahead. Still Ishi had been right we'd gotten all the ones in the immediate area. There were probably more headed this way though drawn by the sound of the fire fight. There would also probably be other people drawn to investigate the noise.

"Hey Hirano is your house in this neighborhood?" I asked him as we looked around, he nodded, but reminded me that his parents were both in different parts of Europe right now. That wasn't why I had been asking though. I was kind of curious to see Kohta's house, but we still needed to find Takashi and Rei's parents. We also needed contingencies. After all what could we do but try and survive this nightmarish world.

Mr. Takagi had already said it would be important to work out... something about harmony and something that didn't really translate well into Western/English concepts. The idea behind this meeting was understandable though. It was better to go ahead and talk this out now, than let it fester.

So allegedly we were going to sit down to hot tea with Yoshioka and someone. I wasn't exactly sure which of us was going to have it worse considering Saya was still sadled with the platoon of morons who were still making noise. Then there was Takashi who was probably going to end being subjected to another of Rei's rants about Shidou, well such was the responsibility of long time friends. With the immediate threat of the zombie horde dealt with smoothing ruffled feathers was clearly the most important thing for survivors. Hirano had likened this the Allied Forces during World War I, and how maintaining a cohesive morale was important in the face of possible enemy attack.

-scene break-


	6. Chapter 6 Back into the wild

Back into the Wild

-scene break-

As it turned out planning our next move basically meant holing up in a room and talking, which gave me time to finally sort through my bags, and hand out a few items that might help. Ultimately there were only so many hours in a day. When we'd gotten finished with one thing we still had to deal with the other stuff.

At some point Hirano was able to talk the mechanic... Matsudo I think... through the steps for fixing any issues with the engine, and he, the mechanic, could walk others through it. Hopefully there was no serious damage to any of the vehicles since they hadn't been on, or at least the ones inside the complex hadn't been. The ones away from the house proper though, well who could say without actually testing them, which we personally didn't have time for.

Either way the house was safe, and as we were informed so were the neighbors. It was a distinct improvement over having to run like we had away from the school. The fact we were able to after that sit down and have dinner had been pretty nice as well even if the power was gone... oh the Takagi's had a generator, and spot lights because they were prepared but now we knew the power was gone. It wasn't likely to be coming back on any time soon either. Mr. Takagi had set back his plans for, right now at least, three days so that they could gather more supplies and prepare... so that was the amount of time we had to get ready and find the other parents. There was no telling whether they'd actually be able to get the power plant working, and I frankly doubted it.

Saya pulled the door shut. Right now her father and another group of his Patriotic Organization were preparing to load out for another supply run. "They're going to gather supplies from a construction site in the eastern part of town. My Papa is talking about reinforcing the entry way to the compound."

There was no denying that the gate had taken a bit of a beating, on both sides. With the EMP having knocked out the power the Takagi's were adjusting their plan. Just like we were having to adjust ours, especially since we were coming back here. My theory was that it had been North Korea that had launched the nuke, which meant most likely Pyongyang was a glowing crater a courtesy of instant sunshine from the US Pacific Fleet's Trident II SLBMs. No other explanation made sense as to why there had been such an EMP.

Not that that did us a whole lot of good. Without the effectively instant communication of the modern world it would take time for people to figure it out, but people were going to either figure it out or hear it from someone else like one of the ultranationalists. One way or another it was going to get out.

"Uh Saya uhm," I turned away from the window where I was watching the courtyard to the sound of Kohta's voice as he tried to get the girl's attention, "None of this is really practical clothing, I mean if we're going to be out and about we need to be thinking about stuff for sustained elemental exposure." He had a point, but we were going to have to hit a clothes store anyway there wasn't any point in me jumping into the conversation.

-scene break-

Takashi leaned against the exterior side of the wall. He still had his bat, but now he had the shotgun slung over his shoulder, and the Glock, which was in a blackhawk holster on his belt. I had insisted on that after he'd stuck it in his pants, thankfully in the small of his back, but the point stood. "We should go back to Hisashi Police Station, you said it yourself we need more weapons, and ammo, and its were Rei's dad works. We might find a lead if we go back there" Strictly speaking we needed ammo for the shotgun specifically.

"You do remember it was empty and creepy as fuck right?" I asked rhetorically, as I picked through one of my large duffle bags that was sitting outside the ASLAV as we stood around making our final preparations to head back out into the chaos. I'd left the clothes and the first aid bag stashed in the ASLAV the night before, because there hadn't been a point to messing with them. "Still you've got a point. We do need to gather supplies." Sooner or later looting was going to start. In fact I was willing to bet that there had been some already so we did need to make our move sooner rather than waiting.

We were fine as far as nine millimeter, and 7.62 went considering when I'd shown up in front of the school the ASLAV's rear had been filled to brim. That was to say if you made a stack of 20 round ammo boxes from the bottom to the ceiling of the rear it'd be sixty something boxes depending on how close to you wanted to pack to the ceiling. It was also the reason I wasn't worried about handing ammo over to the Takagi's people, because we needed extra space for other items rather than so much spare ammunition.

"So we hit this gas station, then a clothes store and then the police station." Hirano said pointing at each on the map that he'd unfurled. "We'll leave take the highway, and after we get to the station we'll head for the elementary where Takashi's mom works."

I didn't like the part of the plan about going to the elementary school. Fujimi had been one thing that'd been somewhat defensible, but an elementary. Also the danger of ankle biter zombies scared the piss out of me. Still I'd said I'd help, and there wasn't enough room in the Humvee for all of them to ride safely. I looked down at the map, "Thats the plan then," and the best one we had for the moment.

We probably could do for picking up more maps. I could only contribute general ideas to the planning simply because I didn't know enough about the local area, and it was a rather grating... what will you do from here on... that had been what Mr Takagi had asked. He had a point the plan was to link back here after we'd tried to find the other parents... Shizuka's friend was also alive as well and well enough she could make a phone call. That was a point to consider as well.

"That bastard is here,"

... and Rei was still murderous over Shidou joy... apparently the story I'd gotten to hear was she'd gotten held back because their parents had been dicking around with each other politically... or something. Her dad was investigating his dad for corruption or something so he'd failed her. "Well it won't matter because we'll be gone soon so you won't have to deal with him."

Shidou had tried to make small talk after we'd come back from resetting the barricade as some measure of calm was restored to the compound. It was pretty obvious he wanted to stick behind whoever had the biggest guns, and that was Mr. Takagi, and us. It was a completely understandable, from my point of view, position to take. As it was he had a bunch of rowdy high schoolers to watch over. Even if Shidou was trouble which I doubted, maybe mistakenly, I was sure Mr. Takagi could handle it, and well he had a radio that could contact us in case he needed to tell us something.

I doubted he'd need to given they'd secured the entry way to the neighborhood. With the barricade up the zombies, as had been proven, wouldn't be able to get through as long as it was up. Of course if they did the vehicle gate wasn't in real good shape. Still all they needed to do was holdout until they left, or whatever they chose to do, and if the Zed couldn't get past the barricade the loose gate shouldn't matter.

I rezipped my bag and stowed it in the inside of the ASLAV. We spent about two hours reshuffling stuff into place in preparation for leaving. The Humvee was probably carrying, on top of various other supplies like food and water we'd gathered, about a thousand rounds worth of 7.62 ammunition... or to put that in perspective Takashi and Rei had lost just a little bit of their leg room. That was fifty boxes, twenty on each side and ten up front with Hirano in a bag. Considering each box was like three inches wide, and probably just over five you could stack them into neat little piles. That didn't even take into account what they already had loaded.

Saya had a Luger now, a genuine article Luger, ... it was even in 9mm, and had a stock... and she didn't know how to use it. Most likely that meant we were going to have to find somewhere were we could practice before leaving it behind. Still talk about nice gifts from parents. "Its time to leave I suppose,"

We all turned towards the vehicles. The loadout for riding had been decided. Shizuka, Alice, Hirano, Rei, and Takashi were in the humvee. Ishi was, as was getting to be normal, up top on the ASLAV's commander's cupola, and I was driving. Saeko and Saya were in the back. I wanted to minimize all melee engagements as possible. This arrangement allowed us to concentrate our shooters up front for the most part.

The humvee riders piled in, and Ishi clambered up the top of the ASLAV now with the FN, with its stock folded, slung on his shoulder. One of the nationalists had asked me this morning over breakfast why we hadn't used the machine gun. It was kind of a stupid question, but also he had a point. The two cuppola pintle mounts each had a MAG on them, and against a horde of ZED would probably be useful, but at the same time it'd burn ammo, and I wasn't so flush on 308 as to just burn through it like that. Going through a box of PMC 308 was nothing if it was for training, but letting loose with the MAGs, yeah I wanted to avoid that. There was also the noise issue, better to avoid making that much noise where possible. There was also the risk of a richocet at close range around the metal fixtures of the gate.

For all the trouble we'd run into here. For all the arguing with people about whether kids should have been armed, and what this whole mess was we got a hearty send off. People waved, and wished us good luck, and others just didn't want us to leave.

That was understandable to, considering we were seriously well armed. The Takagi's were prepared obviously but they had their own quirks, and some of their guests were annoying as hell. They were all human though, and that was the important thing. I started the engine it was time to get on the road. We'd had time to set up the radio between the Humvee and the ASLAV so we didn't need the handsets. "We're oscar mike- over." Hirano announced through the radio as the Humvee started rolling through the opening.

The ASLAV started rolling after them, and we pulled on to the highway as we left the Takagi estate and the surounding secure area behind. We were going to come back once we'd checked Takashi and Rei's neighborhood, and the police station, and the elementary. Hopefully we'd find the parents today, but even if we couldn't do everything we needed to today we had a few days to get back here before the Takagi's planned to put the next phase of their plan into motion, whatever that ended up being.

I didn't really understand why the Takagi's planned on leaving their complex. As far as I could tell it was secure as anywhere else. I also however didn't know anything about the area around this city, so maybe they had somewhere better to relocate to. So far though the Takagi estate, not that we had much to compare it to, had been the best example of safe haven. Abandonning it for the unknown for good seemed a bit extreme at this stage.

Mr. Takagi had said they'd be here for three days, at least. For next three days they were going to be gathering supplies in preparation for leaving the estate in a more permanent fashion if they had to do that. We had until then to get back, shouldn't be to hard to do.

-scene break-

Moving, leaving the Takagi's estate behind, was physically just a matter of getting on the road. Sure there had been zombies on it, but not enough that we'd get swarmed. We just had to drive through, we'd hit one... or I should say Shizuka hit them every know and again, but there were only twenty or so along the road in the immediate area of the Takagi residence.

We'd probably cleared most of the local infestation during the firefight yesterday. It wouldn't stay that was most likely with the EMP they would keep heading that way. I figured the people working for the Takagis would periodically thin the herd keep the numbers down seeing as they were planning to keep sending people out to get supplies in cars.

That was also exactly what we were about to do as well, now that I'd packed away the hand pump. Or rather what we had been doing since we'd already topped the fuel tanks off, and the vehicles with diesel and Takashi had cleared gas station so basically we were here piling food and water in, with a priority for water bottles. Still we were in a bit of a fucked up situation.

"Grab deodorant too," I shouted, because I'd brought my own, but I noticed that Takashi was starting to sweat a bit, and that had been with showers at the Takagi's house. "Ishi stop taking out the trash damnit."

I wanted to say that Ishi was the most normal reacting to all of this. Takashi was a close second, and he was surprisingly followed by Shizuka. She seemed to get through this by being a giant ditz, but even she had her reactions to this whole mess. I was discounting Alice from this list of who was reacting the most normal.

Saya may have been bossy, and a tad prone to being pissy, and had all the common sense about clothes as a nudist, as evidenced by the clothes she'd brought from here house, but there was no denying she was smart which meant she had pointed out a couple of things we probably out to have considered earlier. As it was Rei was snapping back and forth between keeping things together, and psycho emotional. Hirano and Saeko were both too damn good at killing things, which of course was a good thing, but still not normal. Not that all this really mattered because really this situation, this whole mess was anything but normal. It was a whole new world.

Still here we were raiding critical supplies we'd need to survive and Ishi was taking the spoiled milk, and other perishables and tossing them out in the trash... well I guessed there were worse ways to cope with the situation. It did seem like a waste of time though when the rest of us were either keeping watch or loading bags with food, or drink, or other needed supplies. I opened a package of pocky and started munching, before checking my watch. Hirano was handing sentry duty, and Shizuka was already in the driver seat of the Humvee. We were planning to get back on the road shortly. I stuffed the opened package of pocky in my tote and grabbed the bag of supplies Saeko had brought over, "I take it you grabbed what you think you'll need?" I'd have asked Shizuka to make sure to get this kind of stuff but she was kind of an air head.

She nodded, and I hefted it up and headed outside putting the bag in the back of the humvee. "We should probably get moving." Hirano told me from his spot on top of the Humvee. "They are coming down the road. We've still got a little bit, but," I lifted the binoculars to check out the horde of them approaching.

"Right." I walked back inside, "Okay guys wrap it up lets finish this quickly Hirano spotted a group of t zombies that are heading towards us." Ishi finally stopped taking the ruined stuff out, and moved on to helping the others. He'd been the first one done grabbing stuff, and hadn't wanted to take extras of stuff, which I personally didn't think was such a good position but it was his choice to make. Water, and drinks in general were the main thing to grab here anyway. Stuff like rain gear, and fuel, plus an assortment of other items were also worth taking.

We started to wrap it up, and grabbing the bags to toss them in the back of the humvee, starting with the people who'd be riding there. Kohta had given us the heads up so we had time, but Shizuka was in the front anyway so better to let her get a head start... also Kohta was probably going to start shooting them soon seeing as we had the mobility advantage and they were coming at us anyway.

After they got stowed away we tossed the rest in the back of the ASLAV. They could sort it out, and where it should be stuck after we got on the road. A couple minutes later Hirano fired his first shot and I turned to Ishi, "Go get on the top of the ASLAV and watch the rear while Hirano's shooting." I ordered, and then picked up two bags and headed to the back of the armored vehicle.

Once I did that I pulled my binoculars back out, there were probably twenty or thirty zombies down the highway heading our way, and more further spread out. It was as Hirano had said a target rich environment. There were just enough zombies that even if they got with a charging distance we should be fine. By the time the larger group got here we should already be rolling down the road. Just in case I turned and checked around us, even though Ishi was already doing that from his vantage point on the commander's cupola.

Takashi was the last one to jump in the humvee, after he shut the back. Hirano stopped shooting, and buckled up, and then probably started reloading his ammo. Saeko clamored in the back of the ASLAV before the Humvee started off ahead of us. Once everyone was on board I pulled the driver's hatch closed, and started after them. They were already shuffling, moving things around, and Ishi was probably scanning the road up ahead.

At least we'd gotten food and water, and other things. Personal hygiene was important especially with running water going to be pretty scarce from here on, and it being winter. It was the last fact why were immediately prioritizing getting clothes, now, and why were hitting the damn mall. Any other situation remotely like this I would not be doing this but there wasn't a choice.

-scene break-

I had already tossed Saeko the radio handset since she'd be leading the group, she also had the clothes list, and sizes for the boys, and Alice and Shizuka obviously. We'd be waiting in the cars while they gathered what they could in case we needed to make a quick escape. Or that was the plan at least until we actually got there. As it turned out the local mall was fortified.

Right now we were looking at well barricaded entrances. "Huh survivors,"  
"What do we do?" Takashi asked over the radio.

I looked at him, "We adjust the plan," I told him, "They'll have heard us drive up. One car is loud, two big block diesels like we drive... we're a rock concert as far as a quiet city is concerned." It didn't help we weren't exactly low profile. I glanced over to Hirano who was sighting his AR 10 towards the building. Given the way he was moving he'd probably spotted movement inside. Ishi was already keeping watch over the parking lot. I glanced at my watch I wanted this handled quickly, which was why Shizuka had parked pretty much right on top of the entrance for fast egress from the place. After a minute he confirmed it.

"There's movement on the second floor." Hirano called confirming my guess. "They're coming down to the entrance," he stopped talking suddenly, and swallowed "its a police officer."

Fuck... fuck this was going to be a mess. "Ishi watch the parking lot," Not like he wasn't already doing that of course,. I pulled myself out of the hatch and started walking briskly towards the entrance, and towards the humvee "Alright the plan is still the same. Go in and grab the clothes, and we'll leave." Unless there was a group of survivors equal or approaching the people at the Takagi's estate there was no way they could need all the clothes, "We're good on food, and water, and we're pretty fine on medicine." I reiterated.

I could hear them talking inside, and could smell where they seemed. Saeko looked over at me, and I shrugged. "We'll do this quickly and get going," She responded. "If there are survivors in there we should be able to be quiet about all of this." Yeah hopefully if they weren't dicks..

"I'll take point, then Saeko," I commented quietly as they let us in.

"Thats -," Oh god there was another one, fuck we'd found another Gun Otaku... not that I could talk strictly speaking, but still. The cop chick seemed to recognize the MP5 as well a 'police gun'.

I waved, "Yoh my friends need changes of clothes," I smiled, "and then you can reset your barricade that is very well done by the way, thats all we want." The broad shouldered dude who I was guessing was a gun otaku like Hirano, though probably without the freaking Delta Force tutor, and the cop kind of started a bit.

"Ah Asami- that is this officer is protecting everyone until Matsushima-senpai returns." She said looking at us, "Its a police officer's duty to protect the citizenry," I wasn't honestly sure from her phrasing and tone whether she thought we were threats or if she thought she'd be protecting us from the Zed.

"Yeah," I muttered, "Okay so can we come in?" I was at least trying to be polite, I didn't like the idea of shooting people who were just trying to survive especially not in this situation. These people didn't seem hostile, and I really hoped they weren't. There was no way they were canibals or anything cliche like that.

The shopping mall itself was pretty impressive. Of course the power wasn't working, that fucking EMP. I really wanted to know who's brilliant idea it had been to pop nukes in the first place in the middle of the Zombie apocalypse, and why. Of course that wasn't likely to be something that'd be easy to find out.

The down side to getting invited in was the commotion. There were other survivors holed up here, and I wasn't really keen on staying long enough to meet them. On the other hand if we hadn't hit the gas station this would have been a good place to stock up on food. It seemed like they were picking the food, and from the smell they were stocking up on smoked food. I could honestly say whoever was organizing was on the ball.

I kept looking around as we started up the stairs. This mall was surprisingly well set up for survival for a place with so many big doors. By all accounts the Takagi estate was better off for any number of factors, particularly because of preparedness before this mess. This place was already secure, and in its own ways it was a pretty good place to hole up if you had enough people to watch the entrances. Like every where else water would be the real limiting factor for survival, but they seemed to have food supplies covered. I'd never really been the mall type, it'd always been one of those girl domains that guys didn't go to unless they got dragged.

Looking at some of the shops here they wouldn't have had to dragged me along. It was also what made this place all the bigger disappointment, because most these electronics that were on display were probably fired by the EMP. The ones in the storage areas might be okay, but even if they were what did it matter in this scenario. There was also the fact even if they were the top of the line computer on the market, I was still from 2012, and so were the electronics I'd brought with me, and besides that what was I going to do go nick a super sized television to watch tv. Even though I couldn't do anything with any of it, it was one of those stores I'd have liked just looking through on an off day. So it sucked that all of it was probably ruined.

"Woh who are these-" The new guy was big, built like a NFL linebacker, and he stopped talking when he saw the guns. Damn it getting loose of these people was going to be a bitch.

Asami introduced him as Shimada-san, and the meat cleaver he was carrying on his belt looked pretty serious. Him and their Gun Otaku were probably the muscle of the group. "Saeko go with them and get the clothes, I'll..." I gritted my back teeth, "Make rounds with the locals," This was going to be as bad getting teeth pulled. At the same though they were human so there was a moral obligation to try and help them, especially when it wouldn't hurt us. The least I could do was tell them about the Takagi estate survivors. This group was well organized, and with the food they were preparing from the shopping center's grocery store they could really contribute to the Takagi estate.

-scene break-


	7. Chapter 7 Troubling Situations

Troubling situations

Helltanz's notes: As we approach chapter 10 I feel it necessary to state that this first arc is mainly to introduce the first changes in the first week of the zombie apocalypse. The descisions of different people will come under scrutiny, and obviously different groups will be encountered once 'arc 2' starts for example the Yakuza might show up, other student survivors, maybe tourists, or something along those lines.

Either way with the Takagi Estate surviving, and as implied by other events, things are changing. I will say I'm sticking reasonably close to canon for the moment. By and large though thats changing because of changes in events. The mall for example will play out different. If anyone notes any glaring plot errors feel free to point them out.

-scene break-

There hadn't been much time to talk to the people who were holed up in the mall. Not before we got the warning of the threat of imminent zombie attack. It did keep me from having to get into a lengthy conversation, which we really didn't have 'time' for, because we did have a fair amount of things to do including looking for supplies at other locations. Ishi had radioed in Zed on approach, and we heard Kohta's first shot a minute later. It was only a handful that were an immediate threat if we dallied, but that was plenty both as an excuse to leave now, and a real reason to leave. Kohta could kill them all quickly, but there were already more coming. We'd need to be gone by the point that the rest of the horde started this way.

I grabbed the radio. It hadn't been made official but with Hirano's prodding, and exposure to the Takagi organization, and me we were starting to develop a paramilitary layout. "Saeko you heard that, make sure you have the bags lets move." I turned to the survivors who'd been held up inside the mall, "Well you'll want to reset your barricades, and I honestly advise you to choke the extra stairs up just in case." Both of those were pretty common sense, but every little bit helped I supposed. After that they'd probably want to get one of the upper floors and stay there.

I really wanted to tell them how to better improve their readiness, but these people didn't really seem that capable of getting organized for that kind of thing. From what information we had exchanged there had been an older cop who'd gone for back up, and she'd been in charge. Now that she was gone these people weren't really doing anything but going through the last instructions, and what seemed like a good idea. As for the clothes well as long as the girls had changes of clothes we could get clothes for the guys later. The girls could change when we got some breathing room. Right now we were going to bail, and that was the priority.

I had broken my own rule to come talk to these people, I'd insisted everyone walked with a partner when they went somewhere. I needed to get back. I started walking.

"Where are you going?" Shimada asked, "Where you going to go?" He kind of made a gesture to the barricades on the entrances to the shopping center.  
I shrugged, the truth was... they weren't my obligation, even if we should be trying to help them, we did have other things to do. At the same time though they'd only be so long they could stay here without support. "You said the police should know where you are right? Just man the barricades, you'll be fine, hold out." I swallowed, "If you're still alive when we come back, if you've kept yourselves alive well..." Mr Takagi said he'd be prepared for whatever his plan ended up beingin a few days, "We'll take you with us, but for right now I've, we're still searching for someone you're safer here." I lifted the radio, "Kohta?"

The shots had stopped, "Ah its all clear, yep all balls in play sunk. There is a bigger horde coming though" He announced. He was probably reloading the magazine he'd been shooting already. Still if that was all of them that was good, we could go ahead and get loaded.

I took one of the bags as Saeko and Takashi got up to us, "Look we'll being coming back through you can come back with us, in the mean time," I slid my handset across the ground, "If you need to get in contact with us," We'd agreed... that was to say Hirano, Saeko, and the rest of the group, and I that we didn't have the resources to save everyone. I told them that it should only be used in emergencies, and that its battery should be conserved.

This radio though was going to be more than a psychological lifeline than anything. If they did get into a mess chances were we wouldn't be able to get there fast enough unless they were somewhere defensible. From the perspective of the supplies this place could supply it was a good place, but if its defenses were breached it would probably fall pretty quickly.

There was also a part of me that was a little doubtful that the police would be coming. Even though we were going back to the police station it was for supplies. It'd been abandonned, in the best case scenario, by the time we'd gotten there on the first day. That didn't leave me with a whole lot of hope, and we'd left because it'd been like that. We were really only going back because it was the best place to start looking, and might have supplies worth gathering.

That was the truth, but with so many zombies trying to make sure as many humans as possible survived was critical. Even if we couldn't keep them with us trying to keep them alive by giving them something to clutch hold of, something to hope for. If these people could keep alive then maybe we could get one of the cars here working, maybe even a bus and drive to the Takagi's on our way. Really if we could get something like a van or a truck it'd be ideal because then we could bring supplies back in bulk with us to the Takagi Estate.

When we'd been plotting out where to go Hirano had brought up the shotgun ammo situation, and about the guns we hadn't had to use yet. I'd come packed for in the event I needed to arm other people, and that was what we were doing. Ishi toting the FAL around was good because it was in 308, and we had plenty of that. I'd brought a folding Sig rifle in 223, and had a fair amount of ammo for that, not to the ridiculous extent as 308 and 9mm, as well as a Ruger 10/22, and 22 caliber target pistol. With the benefit of hindsight I knew I should have considered bringing another 7.62 caliber rifle, or carbine when packing, and brought along M4,but there was no point regretting now... well I'd added those notes to my 'hypothetical scenario' notes.

Hirano had pointed that there was a gun store we should consider hitting. If we were lucky and it hadn't been looted it'd would probably have twelve gauge ammo, and possibly 22... maybe even. It was also apparently near a castle, which might be worth trying to use as a place to hole up in if we needed somewhere to spend the night.

Kohta had also pointed out that there was a chance that the sporting goods been looted already. Of course he'd brought it up because we could drive there. We'd been inordinately fortunate about Shizuka's friend's guns, especially given their caliber. The other options for ammo, realistically, was the police station, which we'd agreed to to begin with. If we were lucky the police station would have shotgun ammo.

We exited the entrance we came in. I got the impression that there were other survivors, somebody had to be handling the cooking, especially considering the power wasn't working. Still it was a little disconcerting. The traffic cop was the first cop we'd actually seen in person. Certainly there had been some on the bridge that first night. Even with all the noise of the city we'd heard the gunshots but that had just been from a distance. This junior cop was the only one we'd seen, which was not likely a good sign for people who were depending on the police to save them.

That first day we'd seen JSDF helicopters but hardly any police. It did kind of make sense. We'd pretty much left the school, stopped to argue, picked a spot to actually split, and then left for our seperate ways, and then from there we'd gone on to go to Shizuka's friend's house. It had been there that we'd stayed the rest of the day. Of course it hadn't made sense for the police station to be quite so empty, but there hadn't been any zombies milling about either so it could have been they were all out. Still we should have stripped it when we got there, as it was we should have gone in all together and searched it.

I looked around. This place, the exterior, was pretty well secured, if these people could keep it together until we got back we could probably get them to the Takagi estate. We finished loading the bags of clothes into the Humvee's rear compartment. They probably weren't totally ideal for what was coming but they were better than having the girls stick to running around in mini skirts... or hoping the Takagi's had extras of those silly black track suits they were all parading about in. Of course the Takagi's probably did in fact have extras... but those outfits probably weren't ideal for a number of reasons.

I knocked on the passenger's side front window, and Hirano clambered up the seat and stuck his head out the top of the Humvee, "Whats up?"

"I gave the survivors inside a radio, hopefully they're going to be smart about it and turn it off until they need it." I stated, taking a minute to look back at the mall. That was probably the first piece of equipment that they'd seen worked since the EMP. "either way stick to the vehicle radios if you need to talk, I don't really know much about the people in there."

He nodded, and Takashi jumped into the conversation, "Thats right, and there is a cop with them right, that could be trouble for us." Yeah, that was the truth because this was Japan, and we had enough equipment to knock over some small country. "She could really cause a problem for us." He reiterated again.

I shrugged, "Just keep in contact via the vehicle radio." I told them again walking back towards the ASLAV, where Ishi was already waving from the top of the turret. Shizuka pulled away from the front of the shopping center and was already nearly to the road by the time I got back to the ASLAV.

Her crazy driving was pretty scary. I wondered if she was intentionally running over the zombie corpses that Hirano had shot while we'd been inside grabbing the clothes from the store. She'd probably hit a lot more as we were driving away, because there were a lot zombies that had been attracted by Hirano's shooting.

"We're settled back here." Saeko called from the back. We'd stored all the gathered clothes in the humvee, but since it was all clear and we weren't having to run there was no point in her not getting directly back in the ASLAV. Ishi yawned as he sat back on the bench.

I looked back as the engine rumbled, "Alright, Ishi you might want to try and nap." We still had no idea how we were going to this thing with the police station, and what not. I put the ASLAV in motion and got about sixty feet behind the humvee, which was waiting in the middle of an intersection with Hirano popped up on top looking around with his binoculars so he could take a look around.

Well we were gonna have to come back here eventually. First though we needed to hit the police station, and then see about going by Rei's house. We also needed to see about eating lunch. That might have seemed a bit of a trivial concern, but everyone needed to keep their strength up.

I hear Ishi adjusting some of the stuff in the back, and trying to get comfortable, and then Saya spoke up, "Are we going to take those people back to my papa's?"

"All things considered it'd probably be the best for everyone." At the same time though I could see why Saya in particular would be wary about bringing extra people, even if we were bringing food and water back to the estate.

The situation at the Takagi estate had been deteriorating, and despite what Rei had implied, it had nothing to do with Shidou showing up. The ultra nationalists were fine, they had an established chain of command to help them cope, but the normal people weren't so lucky. Like they had said they were just 'normal Japanese citizens'. Saya had been sent to deal with that first hand. The civilian survivors weren't coping well with the situation.

She probably crossed her arms, "there not doing well as it is and its been less than a day," Since the EMP she meant. If these people were exposed to some of the more odious elements who were causing trouble at the Takagi estate well it could just exacerbate the problem. The problem was I didn't see any where else where these people had a chance for lasting anywhere past short term.

-scene break-

I looked around... tch this place was still fucking empty and creepy as mess. I wondered if the other police stations in the city, presumably there was one to the west, were like this. It also looked pretty much in the exact same condition, or appeared to be, as when we'd left that first day. It didn't really bode well for trying to find Rei's dad. Takashi had let her use his cell phone to try and call him on the first day, but the reception had been bad enough that he hadn't been able to hear him.

That did tell us he'd at least been alive when we'd been at the school, and Rei was clinging to that fact. There was no telling how she'd react if we found him dead... or worse, especially with how she'd reacted to Hisashi being turned into a Zombie. Takashi had recounted that occurrence to me last night.

"Hey Hirano?"

He turned his head when I called out, "ah yeah?"

"When we get in here look for a map I want to know where all the other police stations, facilities or whatever are in town." In the best case scenario we could get weapons here, and you never knew what you could find in evidence lock up. Given the size of Tokunosu there was probably a warehouse for confiscated goods, and a dedicated SWAT building somewhere in town, plus whatever other police stations which might be worth checking out.

Takashi looked up, "There is another station across the river, but..." That meant going back across the river. That wasn't an issue, but bridge situation from the first night came to mind. There was no telling what was going on.

The girls were changing like they had when we bugged out from Shizuka's girlfriend's house so here we were waiting. Ishi was still taking a nap, so I was on overwatch on top of the ASLAV. It made sense though, Ishi taking a nap right now that was. He probably hadn't had a good night sleep since this whole thing started. Even at the Takagi's there still had been a lot of stress to deal with so we were all pretty bushed.

We'd found out something interesting that the thermal signature of a human and a zombie was in fact different. That was interesting. It'd be useful for spotting them far off, or during the night. Of course most people who were surviving were probably holed up in some building somewhere were you couldn't see them clearly.

Hirano waved from his spot on top of the Humvee to get my attention, "There isn't a lot of movement, but you've got suppressed rounds right, and suppressor for your EBR right." He was right. The group of zombies wasn't a lot, but at the same time better not let them get to close.

I nodded my head, and gestured to the interior of the ASLAV. "I'll get it, keep watch," I had removed the 'wind talker' quick detach suppressor on day one and been using standard PMC 308 rounds when I had had to shoot because I didn't have a comparative lot of the subsonic rounds, or match grade bullets to spare.

Hirano nodded in acknowledgement, "Hey Takashi keep an eye peeled,"  
"Yeah, yeah I am," He responded from the pavement his shotgun slung over his shoulder, with another pair of binoculars in his hands. It wasn't like we'd seen much driving up once we'd gotten through the horde drawn by the noise near the mall. We'd also opened the police station door and propped it open. So far nothing had come out but that didn't mean shit so there was still the very real chance of Zed being in there... or maybe even survivors. If there were survivors they probably would have tried to make contact.

I took the effort to try and be quiet. The ASLAV interior was still pretty crowded with spare ammo and my five duffle bags, plus other stuff, including food we took from the gas station. In fact it was pretty uncomfortable it was a wonder Ishi could nap back here... Saya, understandably, complained enough about it being so crowded.

I pulled my shooting bag up with me as I went back up top. Hirano had the right idea really. I didn't think that Tokunosu was Tokyo sized, but that didn't mean much. In this kind of mess you didn't need for the city to have that many, as Tokyo, people for there to be problems. As it was there were plenty of zombies to go around. We'd seen more than a few massive hordes from a distance. The ones that had gotten through the Takagi baricade when it had been down by our experience had been fairly large. If we could whack this small group quietly well it'd buy us some time. If we did see a bigger group we could run away. That was the advantage of motorized transport after all. That was the basic idea for our plan to survive until we could find something better.

"I'm seeing at least three, probably more," Hirano said, "I'd say load a full magazine just in case," I nodded, the truth was without a reinforced shooting position any group of zombies over thirty or so was a bit much for us to deal with. We could in theory deal with more if we had extra space between them and us, but the best solution while on the road was just to run away. Trying to stand and fight risked getting bogged down and from there overrun.

I looked through the scope and considered my options, Hirano was right. I could really only see three of them, but there might be more. I let half the breath I was holding out and pulled the trigger there was a softened thump against my shoulder. The very manageable recoil of the M14 and the satisfaction of a downed zed. Hirano flashed a thumbs up, as Takashi kept watch on the flank as Kohta looked ahead of where I was aiming.

By the time girls finished we were done as well. I'd already unscrewed the suppressor, and taken the rounds out, replacing them with the regular velocity 308 rounds I had been using, the rounds we had in abundance. Takashi cleared his throat, and handed me the binoculars, "Look at that." He gestured down the street pointing down the way. I took a minute to find what he was looking at, "He was with us wasn't he?" It certainly looked like a Fujimi school uniform, and there was a mass of dead zombie corpses around it. It meant he'd probably been a part of a group, which was too much of an oddity to be coincidence.

"So how do we look?" Rei asked Takashi.

Alright well since they were back it was kind of time to poke through the police station. I handed my binoculars over and gestured over towards the dead bodies. I thought back to that first day. When we'd been escaping it'd been chaotic, a bunch of students had piled on to the bus. I hadn't really paid much attention to them, because of all the chaos, and just trying to avoid the zombies, but he was right. It had been on that day we'd come here. Shidou, and I hadn't really waited for anyone to decide. I'd told everyone who wanted to come with me to do so now. The rest had presumably agreed to Shidou's leadership of the bus.

Rei had come along because she wasn't going to stick with Shidou, and Takashi had come with us for her sake. I could only presume Shizuka and Ishi came because of what Saeko and I had done at the clinic. Hirano wasn't going to pass up being around this kind of hardware to deal with some high school teacher, and Saya had come for similar if more common sense reasons.

They'd know their own classmate. There could have been a dozen explanations as to why he was here, but the underlying one was he hadn't kept traveling with Shidou and the rest on the bus. There was also the fact of the zombie corpses meaning there had been other people with them. I hadn't checked in to see who all had been with Shidou. I hadn't really seen a point, because I'd assumed they'd all have been there with him. We didn't know what had happened but I could piece together that the people who hadn't come with us must have divided into at least two more groups.

I looked back to the police station. Then looked back to the girls, and finally I looked at the ASLAV we needed to be ready to bug out. If we weren't able to make it back Mr. Takagi if we could secure this place though it'd probably be a good one to hold tight in.

I voiced this idea to Hirano, and the others. The relative height of the building meant if we could get on the roof we could have a good position to look out for zombies. The fact that the building came with an enclosing security fence around it was another plus. We'd just need to lure out any zombies that were in the building.

"Hey Kohta," I held up my iPad that had been crammed inside the ASLAV since we had all escaped the school, "Lets all go stand by the entrance," I slid the iPad across the floor and under one of the cushioned benches. The music would be loud enough inside the building, but the speakers wouldn't project the sound outside the building... and if the Zombies did come that was why Komuro was on look out after all.

We had determined out objective clearing out Higashi station, and by securing it attaining a fall back position and hopefully ammo and guns. Even if we couldn't secure the building we'd be able to escape, because we had radios, and could keep in contact. We'd just have to minimize the use of our guns, and possibly resort to melee.

Well we'd see how many zombies took the bait first. "Do you have a count on subsonic bullets you have?" Kohta asked me while we looked around the police lobby. "I mean using them in combination with the crossbow and well Busujima-sempai would let us keep the noise down."

This was really one of those we needed better planning for. Right now though we were just winging this, and we were going to have to stop doing that before it got us into trouble were we had to do something drastic to survive. "Its all in the ASLAV," I told him, "with my MP5 suppressor." This was one of those points where instinctively conserving ammo tended to mess you up. This was also a fact of I didn't tend to have to work with surpressed weapons regularly. I had brought the ammo just in case, but I couldn't get to it quickly now that we'd started the music.

"Well it was worth a shot." there was a groaning and we turned to face the hall way. Well here we go again... much as I disliked the idea of Saeko and Rei being melee fighters it was a lot quieter way for dealing with two zombies. At least Takashi was outside guarding the rear, and Shizuka was ready to drive in the event of trouble. If we absolutely had to bug out, well we'd just need to get on top of the vehicles and enter from there.

"Another one is coming down the stairs." Saeko announced quietly as she peaked around further inside, and I looked at the two zombies she and Rei had just killed. Definitely not cops, not these two.

"They probably came looking for help after he got bit." The zombie coming down the stairs though was apparently some cop Rei knew. We backed up further as quietly as we could, and Saya hefted the crossbow up. She'd left the luger in the ASLAV, because it would just be loud, and she hadn't even shot it so far. We should have taken the time to practice on it when we'd been at the Takagi estate, but it had slipped all our minds I supposed.

I needed to wake Ishi up another gun and a pair of eyes outside couldn't hurt. It wasn't exactly the best option, but a little bit of sleep was better than none. I'd probably make coffee in a little while when we got a little bit of breathing room. It'd probably be good to eat lunch first though. I adjusted my HK as walked backwards. We were going to have to forward and go through the building, to do anything less without good reason would mean all of this had been a waste of time that could have been spent on other things.  
From the response to the music there didn't even seem to be that many zombies, and we'd already found one extra gun, and some medical supplies. "What should we do?" Hirano asked as the track stopped playing.

"Guess we go outside and get ready to search the old fashioned way..." We probably need to define a better plan than just try and lure any zombies out first. Waking Ishi up, and digging out subsonic ammo from the bag would probably be a good thing.

Time Stamp: ~1 PM Japanese Standard Time, Z-day +4

-scene break-


	8. Chapter 8 Pushing Forward

Putting things in motion

-scene break-

Hirano leaned over the bag of appropriated guns. I honestly hadn't expected we'd be so lucky. Then again I hadn't paid much attention to the 'left wing crazies' either. A lot of the equipment, that we'd found, were soviet bloc stuff from the cold war. If we were sticking around there might have been more but honestly the room looked like something out of hoarders with shelves running from floor to ceiling all filled with boxes... not organized was right.

Originally we'd been going for moving quickly looking for evidence, and supplies and getting back on the road, but that had gotten side tracked by other things. It had taken time to look around, and then we'd gotten started, stopped, and gotten started again with clearing the building. Clearing the building had taken longer, and searching had required a bit of inventiveness to get in the armory, which had been empty.

That had been a disappointment. Not that I had really any idea of what to expect. I didn't know anything definitive about how the Japanese Police worked, or more importantly what they carried as far as weapons other than a handful of second hand anecdotes, and some vague readings. I'd actually been curious to see what a Police armory looked like.

I leaned back holding a tin of freshly brewed coffee. We were all taking a break. To the best of our ability we had secured the police station, and its surrounding area. Shizuka and Alice were taking the opportunity to stretch their legs while we had the chance to rest.

We had basically gone floor by floor, in a very slow methodical fashion checking carefully with Ishi as he watched the entrance of the police station. It had taken a few hours, and when we were done we checked around the police station after we had loaded the things we were taking... now though we were waiting and watching the rain. Oh we could leave whenever, we did have motorized behicles after all. The question really was whether we should or not leave just yet. Right now Higashi station was secure, and gave us a place to rest. We did have other things to worry about as well. It was true there was a message scrawled on the board. I couldn't help but wonder how long it had gone up.

The first day we had escaped Fujimi high school leaving it to fall to the zombies, and this place had been abandoned by the time we had gotten here that day. We had spent another two days at the Takagi's estate, but that place was safe, but they also planned to escape. We had set out from them today, and come across a mall with survivors that was a plus. We hadn't heard from them on the radio, but that didn't mean much. Actually not hearing anything from was probably a good sign, since it hopefully meant they were doing alright.

I looked out a rain splattered window. I needed a book on local weather, preferably in English, but I needed to know what the weather was going to be like. Of course that be for more mid, to long, term survival planning. The rain and the chance to rest gave me time to think about these kinds of things though.

Saya snorted, "Its raining what do you want to do out in this mess? If we just go out there with out a plan we'll just be making a wasted effort. Searching for people in the rain isn't going to work, and we have to consider it'll be harder to see, and what the means for fighting."

"We should be going already." Rei protested, Given the rain hadn't shown any signs of letting up she might have a point. There wasn't really a point in staying.

Hirano looked down at his AR, which we was in the process of cleaning, "Ah we should wait till were done, and we still don't know what about-" Allegedly surviving elements of the JMSDF were apparently coming to evacuate people at the elementary school. The same elementary school that Takashi's mom worked for, and the same school that Rei's dad had written on the board.  
"That bastard Shidou probably threw him out," She snapped. That really seemed like assuming the worse, but Kohta agreed he didn't like Shidou so maybe. Either way... "and you can sleep on the ride we have cars damn it." That was the main thing we'd been up for an extended period of time just because it was hard to sleep for most people during a crises.

Saeko looked up at the sky, "its going to keep raining so we probably should get going we're going to have to drive slower in the rain." Well that was two people who suggested leaving.

At the same time I wasn't keen on leaving Higashi Police Station wide open. The meant trying to arrange it so it wasn't so easy to get in, or so that zombies wouldn't just wander in. Why a zombie would somehow wander into a supposed to be quiet and empty police station wasn't even a question.

"Ishi come with me we're going to see if we can't get this police car started, "Hirano finish cleaning that and then give us a hand, if we can't get it started we're going to push it in front of this entry way." I figured it'd at least ... hopefully make the building a bit easier to tell if people were in it if we got to come back. Takashi was crashing on the couch, because really the kid needed it, I mean there was a reason I had gone to the trouble of making coffee for myself. We really needed to be thinking about finding somewhere were we could get a good nights rest.

If it hadn't been raining it might have been worth it to try to get the bus running, but that would take time we didn't have anyway. I'd tell Matsudo when we got back. If he could fix it then it was one more high capacity set of wheels.

It wasn't like leaving the police station was really even an issue. We'd already been prepared to do that. The rain was a little unexpected, you get used to having easy weather forecasting in cities, but we'd at least gotten forewarning.

-scene break-

I double checked one of the gauges beside me. The rain was almost completely muffled by the walls of the ASLAV. Shizuka was in the front driving. If we picked up more people we were probably going to have to salvage another car, which meant we'd need someone who could drive.

Rei's impatience was understandable though it was her home that was closest. It wasn't even that big of a deal with motorized transport, but while she hadn't complained about staying at the Takagi estate while we'd been there, oh boy did she let us know her opinion of 'how we should have left sooner' now.

All the hatches on the ASLAV were closed, and I'd told Ishi there wasn't a point in trying to be look out. In theory we could have used the optics on the turret, they weren't particularly complicated. Of course I really hadn't had time to mess with them myself except for the times I'd used the Bushmaster, something I was trying to avoid as much as possible. It was a mistake to correct later though.

So here we were rolling down the streets, occasionally confronted with a bump in the road. That was to say a zed that was in the way and Shizuka had hit with the Humvee. Saeko had already told me that we should consider taking the lead, because this was Rei, and Takashi's neighborhood. The reason was that there was the chance that there would be neighbors or family and friends who'd gotten eaten, bitten... turned into Zed. She had kind of a point. Hirano of the ones up in the lead was the only one we were sure who would shoot the zombies. Comparatively there was a little chance of neighbors here since he lived closer to Saya.

We at least had the guns to arm everyone... no that wasn't entirely accurate I thought as we rolled through the wet streets, and through the rain. We had the guns to arm everyone in the group if we had to, but no one was going to give Shizuka a gun, or Alice. Saeko, and Saya could both do to learn to use a firearm. Honestly though getting Saya to use that crossbow might be a good idea given its relative quietness. I grimaced and hit the breaks as Hirano radioed in. I liked a bit of distance between me and the Humvee, and that was a problem with this rain.

I craned my head towards the back, "Saeko wake Ishi up, and put your rain gear on," I didn't want to risk getting the ammo that was in the back wet. I'd be really glad When we did it'd have to be somewhere were we could take the time to do it, and it was safe... the only place I knew that was the Takagi estate unfortunately. I popped the top of the hatch, and pulled up looking around.

Well at least there weren't any zombies immediately, but I could see the outlines up ahead, and Takashi running up to the ASLAV... without any rain gear. I opened the back hatch and he hopped in the back. "Hirano thinks it'd be best if you take the lead, and I'll direct you."

Sounded like a good idea considering there were probably a lot of zombies in the residential area. It also made sense for Takashi since it was his neighborhood. "Alright, throw him a towel, and move him somewhere were he wont drip all over the supplies."

"Should I go up with the Humvee sensei?"  
I shook my head, "No just stay with us." Damn it was nippy out there. I grabbed the handset, the one I'd pulled out of my bag to replace the one I'd given to the mall people. "Ok I'm taking the lead, and moving up." Shizuka driving behind me made me nervous... more for them than me. I put the armor into drive and pulled ahead of the humvee, and kept driving.

"Ah this is it," Takashi told me pulling his head down... it wasn't that I didn't disagree with taking lead for pushing through that many zombies. I knew there was the chance that the rain might cause the humvee to loose traction, but I didn't appreciate being rained on because Takashi kept his head stuck out the cupola. "Good, get back there," I shut the hatch and took the towel from Ishi. Now came the tricky part. We'd gotten through the zombies, now we just had to look around.

The ASLAV had storage racks and containers. We'd also moved stuff, mainly 308 to the Huvee, but the ASLAV still had a something like a two meter interior ceiling that had been loaded in the rear with ammo. Add to that five duffle bags, some misc supplies from the convenience store, and a handful of people we were squished. It was the main reason for using the turret to get in and out of the vehicle. We really needed another car. Well maybe if we found Rei's parents we'd have another drive. I exited through the driver's hatch, and watched the others pile out, excepting Shizuka and Alice. That was the easiest way. Shizuka could watch Alice, and be ready to drive away if there was too much trouble it was for the best that way.

-scene break-

The rain hadn't let up over the last twenty minutes of our poking about the neighborhood. So far we'd really only seen a bunch of zombies, enough that we definitely didn't need to stay around any longer than we had to.

I adjusted my HK, and stepped to the side to avoid a puddle. I had been surprised when Hirano offered his appropriated HK to Saya. Of course she had been fiddling with that Luger again at the time. Right now though she was keeping a close watch on one side with Takashi.

Ishi had affixed his bayonet to the FN FAL, and was checking one of the alleyways. Even muffled by the rain we could hear the angry shouting now that the vehicles were shut off. Saeko, Shizuka, and Alice were all still waiting in the vehicles as we checked.

It was apparently Rei's mom doing the shouting... I didn't want to make any unfortunate implications, but I wasn't surprised. "We're driving up there, I want to leave this place quickly if she's shouting with this many zombies around." I commented as we walked back to the ASLAV, we had dismounted to check the suroundings as we neared Rei's house.

Shizuka had still managed to hit a dozen zombies as we'd been driving, but the main thing was most of them were in houses. If we were quick we could avoid them before they could figure a way to get out of the houses.

"We should be ready to shoot our way out. If there is a large group we should consider utilizing the MAG58," Hirano finally suggested... I really figured at this point he just wanted to let loose on the machine gun, on the other hand we were basically in a glorified corridor so at this point he might have a point.

We rolled up and looked at the barricade, okay that was a spear. I got out of the ASLAV and looked around, as did the others... well apparently Rei's family was big on spears... there was a joke there I'm sure. I exhaled. "Okay everyone doesn't need to get out," I said as Takashi got out of the ASLAV, even as Rei rushed out of the Humvee, and tackled her mom. I was already watching the shotgun barrel that crammed through the barricade... not a good sign. Hirano saw it too.

"Who's there?"  
If this had been a bit more calm I'd have made a joke about Rei's mom's funny outfit, but now wasn't the time, but Takashi spoke up first. "Its the son of the Komuro family." He called to the people behind the barricade. "Rei, and I were looking for her mom. One of my classmate's parents has secured their neighborhood, it would be far safer there. You should come with us."

As it turned out this group had been pretty fine up until the EMP had cut the power. The story went on and Rei's mom had gone out for food, and other supplies, after they'd let some other group in... and from the descriptions, and the story in general...

... I was going to guess Shidou, and from the attitude of people here we probably needed to leave pretty quickly, "Right Hirano get in the ASLAV," I figured it was better for Rei to ride with her mom, and well in the rain we weren't going to be doing much shooting anyway. "I just got to wonder what Shidou was doing here." I figured we could give miss Miyamoto the Itacha since Takashi had taken to using the that Benelli we'd found at the station.

"Look! You weren't doing anything about him so I went to see Don Takagi before we left," She snapped abruptly at me, "He ran that creep off."

I crossed my arms, and we'd all agreed to try and help other survivors if we could, I sighed, "Right whatever we're going back to the Takagi's." I pulled myself back on the ASLAV.

"Why there?"

Why because we'd actually seen that it was intact of course, "Because there are people in the mall, in that shopping center and we know that the Takagi's have their house set up. We have not seen the elementary and we don't know whether its been overrun since that message was posted, and its raining." I didn't think my plan was that bad, I could understand wanting to find her father but we needed to face facts. We were lucky to find Rei's mom, and we'd all agreed to try and help survivors were we could. The Takagi estate would be ideal for setting up for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we could try and go down to the gun store, and hopefully we'd be able to find some ammo for the shotgun, and then we could go to the elementary. Shintoko third might have been where all the police were holed up. If so maybe they could hold it, but they'd abandoned the police station so I wasn't very confident in their abilities. Then again Shintoko third could have been some old Cold War multistory brick building ideal for holding out with a fallout shelter beneath it. If we were lucky the rain would break, and we could resort the gear we had.

For a minute I thought there might be an argument, but Rei and her mom got into the humvee, and we left her neighbors, fucking douchebags that they were, behind. Hirano, and Ishi took a seat on one side of the ASLAV, and Saya and Saeko took the other set of benches. Shizuka was driving the Humvee, Kirika was riding shotgun handling the radio, and holding the Ithaca. Rei was sitting behind her mom, with Takashi on the other side, and in between them was the kid.

Hirano stretched, and yawned, "So we're going back to the Takagi's that sounds good," He sounded like he was missing having a bed... or a futon or whatever. Hell even a couch sounded nice at this point, using ammo boxes as a head rest sucked.

"We're hitting that mall first. Hopefully to see if we can get a car running." I responded, "it'd be good if it stopped raining, and maybe we could get you or Ishi to man the optics." That got his attention, Ishi probably would have yielded the job to Kohta anyway. Kohta could be adamant about something when he wanted to.

Of course Ishi was also currently playing with the iPad... I shouldn't really call it playing since he was actually reading an eBook. That was the main reason I'd brought computers with me, easier compact data storage, and the iPad did have a decent battery. It also helped that it could be used as a noise if need be... like we'd done at the police station.

The advantage of the vehicles gave us the ability to avoid having to walk, and it gave us mobility and let us carry additional material. It also kept us fucking dry, in most case, thank god for that. "We're gonna get those extra lights out of the bag, and we'll radio those people at the mall before we drive up, so they know." Without power they were probably dependent on natural lighting... of course they could have had lights, and lanterns or something else. As organized as they seemed that was possible. Actually there wasn't any reason to assume they didn't, unless they thought that the EMP was Fucking Magic. Of course a lot of people did tend to assume that.

We rolled up the street still going slower than we'd had been because of the rain. "We should have a certain plan," Kirika was saying suddenly over the radio, one of them must have turned the radio on in the Humvee up ahead. "I was really nervous when those military vehicles drove up, and the you all came out of them, it was a relief. You've seemed to have done well on your own, but if there isn't a clear plan there needs to be."

I leaned back. The plan so far had basically be find Rei's parents, and in theory Takashi's, of course he hadn't said much about his family. His mom worked at the elementary, and his dad was somewhere for work. We'd come here to look for Rei's family, and we'd found her mom, but not her dad. The elementary was definitely the best place to check for him, but it was raining and everyone was exhausted. There wasn't a point running the risk of getting caught up in this rain any more than we had to.

-scene break-

About a kilometer away we got Kohta to go ahead and radio the people in the mall, or at least try to we hadn't heard from them in the hours since we'd showed up this morning. They probably had the radio off, at least that was the best case scenario. Well there was one way to find out. Naturally blaring noise at them was a bad idea, and going in blind equally stupid, but using the floodlights to shine that had the chance to get their attention. It might take a minute but at least we'd be able to check for movement... and well we knew we could use the night vision optics too.

That was what we ended up doing. It wasn't late enough for them to have gone to bed, and even with the rain they certain had to hear our big diesel engines as we pulled up.

Tamaru, as he introduced himself to the whole group, came out to greet us, and we figured the best place to park where we'd have access to the vehicles if we needed them. I looked around, and bigger guy caught my attention. "There is a vehicle dock in the back. We'd have to get the rolling door up, but it'd be the best place to park."

The loading bay was probably exactly like any other commercial loading, and unloading area in the developed world. It might have had a few differences to accomadate various regional regulations, but fundamentally it served the same purpose as any other loading bay. So in short it was a lot of poured concrete, stainless steel, ramps, and generic commercial rolling block doors. We were going to have to open them from the inside, but they had a manual system we could use for that. Of course if we could run power to the motor it'd still probably work... maybe.

The loading bay was basically half full, "Any idea whats in that truck?" I asked gesturing to the Nissan big rig already parked in one of the bays. It didn't look like it had a refridgerator component to it so it probably wasn't food. Of course that wasn't a guaranteed thing.

"We hadn't really been back here. We've been working on trying to keep as much of the food from spoiling as possible." He commented eyeing the big rig's trailer thoughtfully.

I nodded, as I pulled on the pair of work gloves from my tote. "How's that coming?" Was my next question. There was probably a walk in industrial refridgerator for the restraunt on the top floor, and possibly smaller versions for more compact places to eat, but the supermarket area... That stuff would probably spoil a lot quicker since it was open to the air.

Getting the rolling block doors open took several minutes for each. Not that it mattered, while not super effective the rain did dampen the noise we were making. There was also the fact that for the moment there weren't nearly as many zombies around to worry about. For now we wouldn't need to worry, once the middle of the night rolled around well we'd have to be careful.

For as reckless as Shizuka drove she didn't have any issue backing all the way to the back, and Rei,e and the rest of them piled out. Hirano put the bag he'd been using down on the concrete floor. I dropped down to the concrete floor from one of the concrete dividers. All that really need to be done was to back the ASLAV into bay, which was actually harder than it sounded. It was really just a combination of generally small issues that came together to be a general pain.

-scene break-


	9. Chapter 9 Camping

Camping

-scene break-

Without the whir of technology though the mall was eerily quiet even with more than a dozen other people around. So for now we were milling about here up ostensibly just high enough for a good view of the area, which was somewhat impaired by the rain. After we'd parked, and let the rolling block doors down. Now since zombies didn't wield fire axes we didn't need to worry about those doors, and the single doors were already barricaded. After that we'd moved some of the unused tables and couches down to the ground floor, which was a pain in the ass.

Those blockades making a path to the loading area were crude, and really only meant to give us enough time to get there. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, and hopefully if it did it'd be enough, because the other option was a shootout. If came to a shootout well it'd make more noise than was good for us, which meant we'd have to leave, or reinforce the entrances, which wasn't going to be particularly easy to do in a bind.

With those preparations done we'd come back to the vehicles to unload some light supplies, mainly bringing to this floor a handful of light backpacks. "Hi," I grunted to the people who hadn't come down to the ground floor when we'd been working on getting the vehicles situatied. I tossed a bag up on the countertops. I'd gotten the leadership role of the group for a single redeeming set of virtues. I was the one prepared, so I got the job. There hadn't been a vote or anything. Iwasn't like Shidou had wanted. It'd been more de jure. "Hirano take those NVGs and head up to one of the upper floors, like the restaunt and take a look around," He nodded, and headed towards the stairs with Saya who was still clutching the MP5 Saeko had taken off that zed that had been in riot cop gear she'd stabbed in the throat back in the station.

"Right. I'll get a total three hundred and sixty degree view." He slung his rifle over his shoulder, "Be back in 20," he called back, if there was anything worse... well he had a radio, but I was hoping it didn't come to that. If he had to radio something it meant a problem, which given the time meant hoping it passed by.

I checked my watch. Even with the massive skylights we were getting pretty much no natural light because of the rain. Not that it was going to mean much as latte as it was. So we were pretty much going to be using lights. "Don't suppose you guys have flashlights?" We'd picked up a few from the police station, including from the ones taken from the remaining patrol cars. As long as we could find something light wise we could plug into a socket to adopt the voltage I had a battery unit that'd run for sixteen hours. Back home all I'd ever used it for was a handful of parties, some that I hadn't even gone to. You just plugged the lights in and it ran.

Takashi dropped his backpack on a couch made the universal hey I want a word and gestured to one of the stores. He swallowed before he started talking after we got into the entry way of the retail joint. "Do you think it was really Shidou who got Rei's mom kicked out?"

"I hate to say it without evidence, but who else has the motive," I commented plopping down in one of the reclining padded chairs infront of a flatscreen, "what are you thinking?"

He paused, and I saw his hand reflexively came to grip on the sling of the Benelli. "We have to stop him then, he can't be doing things like."

"Did you happen to see who all was with him still at the Takagi estate," I hadn't really talked to Shidou I had had other things on my mind at the time, and with the EMP, and other things I just thought there were more important issues. After the police station evidence, and now with Rei's mom I was wishing I had. "I don't know whats his deal."

He frowned, "We'll have to stop him."  
"Well tonight all we can do is camp here, I doubt Shidou will roll up to our door step." Takashi nodded, and looked around the store. For now we had other things to worry about.

-scene break-

Stringing up the lights we'd taken from the party/decoration section of some electronics store, and raiding candles from some other store had just been a matter of finding them. By time we were done setting the string of lights up Kohta and Saya were back. If these people hadn't been here I'd have been all for going straight back to the Takagi estate, or if the weather had gotten worse trying to set up at the Police Station...and it seemed like now was about time for the bickering to set in it seemed. It also seemed Hirano hadn't been kidding when he said that goofy get up Kirika Miyamoto was wearing was a cop uniform... Japan and their fetishistic clothes, which meant pretty much as soon as we got into the building they'd started yammering.

"Should we say something?" Ishi inquired looking over at Mrs. Miyamoto, and Asami, and the cluster of other survivors.

Hirano shook his head, "She's a former police officer," and strictly speaking I'd been glad that they'd switched targets from me, and the kids. "She's ideal to do this," Naturally some of them were complaining about being armed, but it was mainly when was help coming was the topic they'd picked when they'd start badgering Kirika.

Well most of them, it made sense though if this place had been secured under the direction of a more senior cop than one they had right now. So while the salaryman, and the chick went over to bug Kirika I got to lean back and get a chance to look over the rest of the group. There were a couple of people who I hadn't seen this morning, but not as many as I was expecting. I figured as large as this place was, and as well organized, it would have been a little smaller than the refugees at the Takagi place... that was why I'd been looking for a bus or something.

Of course there were just enough people that one single car was going to be difficult, and Japan wasn't exactly SUV central like America. "So what do we do?"

I glanced at Saeko, "See the guy with the knife in the corner," I nudged my head to the long haired guy who was hunched over staring at what looked like a butcher knife. He was probably in High school he didn't look old enough to have graduated from college. "he's loose, or at least seems like it keep an eye on him. The old people are, well they should be all right, and the traffic cop will probably follow Kirika." I waved her and Hirano over to one of the windows, and away from everyone else.

"And the others?" She had a point it was still a larger group than ours. "We have to consider what it is we're getting into here, and what we might be getting the Takagi's people into. Even if Mrs. Miyamoto can pull them together she can't be with them constantly, and its only a matter of time until they completely fracture as a group."

I figured the kid of their group was probably middle school, maybe a freshman. Hiro seemed ok, and Shimada seemed like he followed instructions of the rest of the group. For that matter the other guys that were their, Hiro and Shimada's, age probably wouldn't be a problem. That still left the woman, who right now I was having a hard time not referring to as a Harpy, the Salaryman, and the three old people. Then there was the issue that the granny seemed to be under the weather.

I grimaced, "Just make sure to stick in pairs at least," We were armed they weren't, but they'd already made a point of bitching about that fact... and the fact that high schoolers were armed. Of course I wasn't about to even consider handing guns out to these people, at least until I got a reason to. Saya would probably be fine with Hirano, because god knows he was good in a fight. Takashi, Rei, and Mrs. Miyamoto would probably stick together, which was actually the problem. In theory it left myself, Ishi, Saeko, Alice, and Shizuka unpaired... and Shizuka and Alice were kind of... yeah. "Keep a watch on Alice and Shizuka if you don't mind." She nodded. We were going to start hitting the point soon that our group, if it got any bigger, that we'd need to split up. We just would be to large to move effectively.

Well that was one problem down, and at least we didn't have to deal with the issue of food. After a couple minutes Tamaru came over and ended up broaching the subject of plans for tomorrow. "I mean you guys are well armed we can totally shoot those things, but what are we going to do?"

"Hopefully the rain clears up," I said walking over and pulling up a chair, "We're going to see about fixing a car. Its fairly simple matter of finding one that's easily repaired." Only about fifteen percent of the vehicles would be in need of actual auto shop level repairs. Meaning there were probably at least one or two we could fix on our own expediently. "It shouldn't take more than a few hours, but after that we're going to proceed to the Takagi estate, which is reinforced."

Rei jumped in and added her two bits about the school at this point. Frankly I was a little surprised she hadn't jumped in earlier. "My father is assistant inspector Miyamoto of Public Security. He is organizing survivors at Shintoko Third Elmentary."  
"We've seen a scrawl on a blackboard," I shot back, and hadn't heard a single radio transmission, which was disconcerting. "telling all survivors to go there. Its been four days we've seen no idea whether they've been over run. So I'm going to the Takagi's first, because we've seen that they're intact. I'm not running straight off into the unknown until I've had a chance to prepare." Most importantly I wanted to check on the Takagi's situation. Their place was easily the best place we had to re situate our gear without having to constantly worry about walkers showing up, even the police station didn't give us that opportunity.

She glared at me, and I straightened up, but everyone here in the group, minus Alice and Shizuka obviously, agreed before hand I had a point, even Takashi and she had him whipped. "The Self Defense Force sent the notice on the J-Alert system," She protested.

"I'm going to the Takagi's first, and then I'll drive the ASLAV to the school," It was hard not to come out and say it, in front of these people considering how dependent they were on cops, but they'd lost the local station and that had been where the message had been scrawled, and there had been zed inside the station. Sure it had been stripped of weapons, most likely by the police, but that didn't make me feel much better. "We found your mom," I said, she needed to get over this my way in its entirety drama crap I wasn't Takashi or Higashi, whomever he'd been. "I'm not driving across town because of a message scrawled on a blackboard. We're going to there yes, because thats where Takashi's mom works, and we'll check it out, but I need the chance to sort through the gear first." and offload some of what we'd found to the Takagi's. "If you want to pull that 'I'm just going to go behind everyone else's back crap and do what I want anyway' go ahead, but don't involve me. I'm not driving straight into the unknown without being ready," Evidence after the fact held that Shidou was a world class douche bag, and a vindictive one, but the fact still stood she shouldn't have gotten Mr. Takagi to throw him and his group out. They were still humans, and any issues could have been sorted out some other way.

"Thats not fair, we all agreed to look for our parents"

I jumped back down her throat, "we also agreed to help try and keep other survivors alive if we could help it. Not have them thrown out into certain death, Shidou might be a cunt but he had a bunch of your classmates depending on him, and you convinced Mr. Takagi to throw his ass out of the compound, so shut the fuck up."... shit I might have just pissed off mama bear from the look Kirika was giving me.

"eh Sensei-" Ishi swallowed, "maybe now isn't the time to talk about this, we're safe here for the moment, but we already said we were going to go back to the Takagi estate." there was some mumbling from the rest of our group in general consensus.

I hoped this hadn't become a wedge between us. Rei wasn't useless, in fact she was far from it, but her diva attitude just because I wasn't willing to put all her needs first was pissing me off. We had already planned to go to Shintoko Elementary. That had been already established, and I was still up for that, but these people were probably better off sticking around here or at the Takagi's until we knew for sure it was safe. Trying to convince them to follow us into the unknown wasn't likely to end in any thing other than major problems for everybody. Besides these people weren't going to be able to stay here much longer, maybe a week if we didn't do something.

-scene break-

We split off from each for a bit before dinner, gathering back together for that, and then divvying off. Tomorrow would be the time for smoothing ruffled feathers. Tonight though we'd just back off let Takashi sit with them. Calling it divvying off though was a bit of an exaggeration. It got dark fairly quickly, in part because it was raining.

Once actual night sat in there wasn't really any point to moving around. The lights might have given some visibility, but there weren't enough of them except to light up a section of a furniture store. If we had some nails, and time we could have put together some reasonably sturdy barricades, but we would be leaving in the morning. For now we were just camping out.

The zombies didn't seem to be effected by the rain, at least in the short term. There wasn't any evidence what effect it would have in the long run. In short we weren't likely to have the good fortune that it would slow them down any. The best we might get was the off chance some might slip and fall, and we also had that same chance

I leaned back in the reclining couch I'd appropriated as my seat. The lighting wasn't exactly great, but it gave us an option besides having people who didn't have flashlights stumbling around in the dark. The strings of lights were ideal for showing people were to walk in the dark considering we had them stretched out along tables, and counter tops.

"Yeah last night we basically just all grouped up together and didn't move," Shimada was saying, "You know the power just died, cell phones stopped working, and then we tried to get a car started, and that didn't work. So the cop said she'd go get help. Nothing seemed to be working until you guys came along. Does this Takagi place still have power?"

I nodded, and munched on an Oreo. "They have a diesel generator, and working vehicles." If Saya hadn't been off with Hirano, who was busy up on the top floor with a night vision scope, she'd probably be going on about how safe her dad's estate was.

We didn't really expect to have any trouble tonight. Opening the doors, from the inside, was the only easy way of getting past the barricades. We weren't making a whole lot of noise either, and coupled with the rain the nearest zombies weren't going to get in without making a racket over all the strewn around makeshift barricades.

"They're over in the Choome 2 right?" he asked, Choome was I guess the name of the neighborhood where the Takagi's lived. "thats high class. We did some work there," Shimada grunted taking a drink from his beer. "You know I worked construction before this mess, bet," He stopped and looked at his beer, "bet I know where we can get some seriously useful stuff." He declared, "I didn't have a way to get to it, you know because we thought the cars were dead. Getting a working car we actually got a chance."

I needed to go over an indepth map over the town... preferably something with English for street names so I could get around... I didn't completely understand it until later but Japanese streets tended not to have names. "Well that will be something to think about, right now Mr. Takagi has groups gathering supplies. I don't really know where they're going specifically." Hirano had told me that the Takagi's had had stockpiles of dynamite... where they had gotten it I had no idea, and didn't particularly want to consider it. On the other hand, and it wasn't saying much, but it was probably better for them to get a hold of the construction site than some one else.

I unfolded one of the guide maps from the police state, which was far from ideal. This was a glorified subway map with hospitals, and police boxes marked off. I was already missing the maps they handed out of New York, or Berlin. Not that they were much better, city issue, tourist maps were always crap. I checked my watch, 11 46 Japan Standard time. Almost day 5.

-scene break-

The rain had let off some time during the night. It'd been a lie to say that it was a good nights sleep, but it hadn't been as bad as it could have been. The arguing had gotten a little more out of hand than I would have liked, but it couldn't have been helped. Of course it hadn't been just one argument. It seemed like this group, the one based in the mall, was also having problems.

Most of us were up and about by early morning, though I didn't begrudge Takashi, and Saya for sleeping in, or Shizuka and Alice for doing the same. Rei, and her mom had gotten up early to practice their spear techniques on the floor below us. Ishi was a fountain of energy this morning too, which was useful because it gave us an extra pair of hands in what we needed to do. It did however leave us with a problem, so while we went up a floor to look through at the cars in the parking lot to try and find a car I asked Kirka and Rei to watch over the others.

We pulled open the loading docks gate, and left it open while we worked. Asami, and Tamaru, and the really big guy were already working on gathering up food, and fixing it. It'd be nice if that station wagon, or that van worked..." Hell it'd be nice if we could get both working. As it was though the parking lot didn't have a dearth of cars in it. That meant we really didn't have a whole lot of options, but putting all the cars in neutral and rolling them over here wasn't exactly an ideal solution either.

So here we were fiddling with cars while trying to keep a look out. I'd be the first to admit cars had never really been my thing, but I'd had my share of problems with my car so I'd kind of had to learn the basic layout of things. Having your water tank blowout on some shitty Alabama high way coming back from a party celebrating a friend getting out of the Army had convinced me of the sense of that... and burned through a sizable chunk of my savings. Well at least money wasn't an issue, it would just be finding the parts.

That'd been a while ago though, and the damage to the cars in this case wouldn't be quite so problematic. Resetting the battery would be simple enough, if the battery needed to be replaced that was still doable, but fixing a problem with the spark plugs could be a little trickier.

Those were likely to be the some of the problems we encountered. One thing was clear though this was definitely going to take a few hours, and that was without stopping for breakfast, or having to deal with any Zed incursions. I was glad though it was just those car problems as opposed to something that required actual expertise, and well it'd have been nice to have keys. That was something to look into as well.

It was a little curious... that was to say the lack of cars, and the lack of wrecks near the mall. The school had gone to panic and chaos fairly quickly, but here things seemed fairly... well there had been a few zed meandering about, but no masses of smoldering burned out cars, or wrecks we had to push through to get to the mall. This itself entailed all of its own sort of issues naturally.

"I guess most of them got out," Ishi remarked from the driver's seat after the car engine sputtered, and then cranked.

I gestured for him to cut it off, and dropped the hood, "Yeah probably." The lack of wrecks was just good fortune. It would make it less difficult to get around, but we had to face facts about things like population density. Japan as a country had a population density of 300 + people per square kilometer. That was for the country on average, cities were a lot higher. That was to say there were thousands of people per square kilometer. "We're going to have to see if the Takagi's need anything when we get back there today."

"Are you thinking about what Mr. Shimada was talking about yesterday, about the construction site, and whats there?"

I bobbed my head, in all honesty Hirano's initial suggestion about taking a page from world war I was starting to sound like a good idea. "We don't have a whole lot of options," Either the local military rolled in, or they were eventually going to have to start calling in air strikes to clear places of the undead.

In the distance, without the noise of vehicles, or a bustling city, we heard a gunshot. We had been hearing them from time to time. This one didn't sound like a shotgun, which was the bulk of what we'd seen in the hands of other survivors.

-scene break-

Basically by ten o'clock, by my watch, which I'd set to local time based off the clock in the minibus when we'd first escaped from Fujimi High School, we stopped and broke for lunch.

We could probably get the toyotas running, which was what we'd been going for. The Vellfire, or Alphard Hybrid or whatever it was called, was at least starting now that we'd reset the battery. I had been a little more concerned about it being a gasoline vehicle with only half a tank but then I was reminded that it was supposed to get 42 mpg. By my accounting that was pretty good, no that was amazing, for a soccer mom car...

I dropped onto a couch, by this point most people were up. I didn't even ask what the food was, I wasn't likely to know what it was any way if they told me a name. I'd have been content to just sit there an eat. We'd still need to find a driver, the traffic cop was a possible option of course... which was an assumption on my part.

"So whats your cause? We didn't get to it last night, but" Shimada asked... was he really drinking beer this early in the morning. He took a long swig. This was not neon genesis evangelion, and he wasn't Misato. Then again it was probably like 2% Alcohol or something, and he was a seriously large guy. "You're all armed up driving a tank."

... I shouldn't have found that mistake so annoying but I did not in point of fact drive a tank, "Its IFV, not a tank." Techically it was an amphibious reconnaissance vehicle but calling it that seemed a bit like Japan calling it light carriers 'helicopter destroyers'. "I just got caught up,"  
"Shit we got caught up too," He grunted, "You look more like you came for a fight. Shit you and the runt. What this hit you when you were visiting?" At this I realized he was gesturing to the combat vest I was wearing. He probably figured that Kohta and I were relatives, and that I'd supplied the weapons. All things considered it was not an unreasonable assumption. "Ah whatever what are these Takagi guys like,"

I could guess from the phrasing he must have wanted to know how well armed they were, "They have guns, and good fortifications," and hopefully they'd gotten the rest of their vehicles working. Surely they had they even had a mechanic so they probably were even better off than us. That knowledge seemed to appeal to Shimada.

"Fuck yea, I'm up then. You said you can fix the cars. Lets get cracking." He drained the last of his beer. Well it wasn't like I was going to begrudge another pair of hands, "It isn't like the cops are any help." I really wish he hadn't had to finish with that statement.

Still there was one more thing I needed to ask him, "can you drive? We need to get at least one car and we think we can get the van running normally, so we'll need a driver."

"I can," He said, but not exactly in the tone that was reassuring, "I can drive a bulldozer, and a truck. I can drive a minivan. It can't be that different." Well he couldn't be any worse than Shizuka was at driving the humvee... still probably better to make sure he didn't drink and drive.

Naturally it was about time for something else to go wrong, what a piss poor time for a medical emergency. I had known the granny had been under the weather, but I hadn't asked, and pretty much left it to Kirika and Shizuka while I had tried to deal with other things. Hell we'd all focused on other things today. Shimada and some of the other mall survivors had been busy gathering supplies from parts of the mall, while Hirano had camped up on the roof of the mall with that AR 10.

-scene break-


	10. Chapter 10 Horizons

Helltanz's notes: Alright luckily there was a draft of this on the web already otherwise my hard drive dying would have delayed this like its delayed everything else.

This is the end of Arc 1, arc 2 whenever I ever get around to posting it will pick up partway into the second week of the zombie apocalypse.

-scene break-

"Ah sensei are you sure you should be exerting yourself?" I swear to god I was going to punch Ishi if he kept this up I was not a fucking invalid. It had been a goddamn blood transfusion not a bone marrow transplant... it wasn't that big of a deal.

We were stuck in the middle of the god damned zombie apocalypse. More to the point we were running down the clock on a window of how long we could really rely on things staying fresh without the power. It was possible that there were parts of Japan that were unaffected by the EMP, but even if that was the case they were for the moment out of reach. Our principal goal needed to be survival on our own; relatively speaking.

I uncurled my arm as I supervised work on the cars outside. Technically speaking calling it supervising was a gross exageration of what I was doing. The Alphard was running, and would work. I was a little worried about possible display issues, but as long as we manually checked the oil we'd probably be good. So that was one car. If we could get one more that'd be great though, just so we could make sure to bring plenty of supplies to the Takagi's estate. I figured if we came bearing gifts they'd be more receptive to new people.

As it was Tamaru was already helping load stuff into the van. He had already started cracking jokes on my supposed being prepared before even born, making fun of my O+ type blood. I had, as a precaution, made sure to stay seated after having the blood drawn, but we were behind schedule as Rei was quite happy to remind us of. I didn't honestly expect her to try and book it, especially now that we were ready.

There wouldn't be a point in breaking with the group at this juncture. At this stage staying here was more likely to be a hindrance than a further advantage, and we all knew that. The Takagi estates multiple barricades were a much better chance than the wide open around the mall, especially with the noise we were making. We weren't going to be able to be anywhere near able to take even a fraction of the food stuffs here. Not that that was as big of an issue, other than being a shame, since a bunch of it would spoil.

Right now I was sitting back while they worked on some hatchback. I turned and waved Ishi off of me, "I'm fine," I made a thorough show of marching over to the hatchback's driver side. "Alright crank it and lets see if we can drive it around the parking lot." The tests were fairly simple to make sure there was no lasting damage. If the car would start then there wasn't likely to be damage, and even if there were problems the most likely ones were going to be with the matter of displays, but it was important to check the breaks, and such just in case.

I figured that after we did this we'd better set out. We'd already spoken with Asami, and despite all my maligning of the practice we'd agreed to leave a big ass note. It would basically say that the survivors here had gone to the Takagi estate, but it would have a date on it. I thought that was an improvement than the one in the Police Station.

Takashi came down and out the front, which probably meant the others would be heading this way shortly. "Saya, and Hirano did a once over, and they've gathered some more supplies that'd be good to bring along," He announced. I nodded at the initiative, they could have picked up anything, but at least they were taking the chance to look for stuff. I hadn't originally considered that we'd find anything really worth it given that I'd figured we'd want to get moving as soon as possible, and the group here had probably already searched the mall.

"Well lets go have a look," I remarked gesturing inside as I started up the stairs "they'll be fine without me for a minute," They had Ishi, and he had the FAL so if trouble came they could run in, or we'd hear the shots... of course the noise from shooting would probably draw more attention.

As far as I'd been able to determine, which was to disclaimer that I hadn't had opportunities to check over the entire mall, the group who had holed up here had done a good job. All evidenced supported that they'd managed to gather up a great deal of food, The meat, and fish had been gathered to be smoked out or dried. The grocery section had other food that, well stuff like nooddles and crisps would be more or less okay.

With the exception of the people down and out front working on the cars, most of the group was up the stairs milling about the second floor. Asami, and Mrs. Miyamoto were talking probably about some police stuff or another. They weren't the only ones a bunch of the other survivors had divided off into their own conversations... except emo knife guy... fuck he was babbling incoherently. I nudged Takashi sharply, "Get everybody away from him,"

"He's been like that for a while," It was about that time he, the guy in the corner, started shouting about how much of a zombie movie expert he was, and how we were all going to die.

That in itself wouldn't have been so hard to deal except he'd jumped up and started swinging his knife around continuing to yammer on. While he did so the guy in the tee shirt, and the guy who was always carrying around the lead pipe started trying to talk him down.

I realized, and I think Takashi got it too that this was the kind of horrible wrong we'd been expecting. It was only a matter of chance, and well when zombie movie fan nicked the big guy in the tee shirt well... Kirika was on him pretty fast, guess she was a cop after all.

That didn't stop him from struggling, but an impact baton to the arm generally encourages one to drop a knife. There was good chance she'd smashed some of the bones in his hand, not that I was all that worried for him.

"Put it down," I told Takashi as he was hefting his, new, shotgun. Mrs. Miyamoto had this well in hand, and besides they were too close I didn't want to risk having to try and treat a gunshot wound, and heaven forbid if Takashi managed to accidentally shoot Rei's mom. "She's got this," I handed him a pair of security ties, and started walking over to the guy in the tee shirt. "One of you grab him so he'll stop flailing, and someone else go get Shizuka." She'd probably wandered off with Alice somewhere, but they'd probably heard the commotion anyway. Before we left we'd need to set up a first aid bag for the humvee group... hell for the other two cars as well.

The old married guy ended up running off to get Shizuka. We were lucky that the cut was pretty much just wide mainly because the idiot had been swinging the knife like it was a sword as opposed chopping with it. It was the only time I was thankful for morons. Either way weren't taking mister I watch too many movies with us after this.

My tote bag had one of those small eight ounce isporyl bottles they sell at 24 hour pharmacies. Big enough to be useful, but not bulky enough it took up to much space in the bag. I didn't even want to think about possible germs, or dirt was one emo boys knife. Of course we were gonna be stuck in conditions that were less than ideal from a sanitation perspective.

-scene break-

I double checked my corner through the view port. The chances of actually hitting anything of consequence wasn't likely, but it was a good habit. The roads were actually pretty empty, it seemed like the traffic clumped up in patches, and then was clear. The highway... for whatever reason was the exception, which made no sense to me.

We managed to leave emo boy behind with out anyone really complaining too much about it. It wasn't like we'd left him stranded either. There were plenty of supplies all the supplies we couldnt carry. He'd have plenty of food if he chose to stay at the mall, and if he put his mind to it could probably get a car running or take a bike and go somewhere else.

Grandpa, who didn't actually have kids it was just really easy to call him old man, drove the Alphard. The old lady, and the other old guy were riding with him, along with the police girl. The guy in the tee shirt who'd had the misfortune to get stabbed along with the impatient salaryman, and the kid were also in the minivan... I really needed to learn their names I supposed. That could wait until after we got settled though.

The other car had Shimada riding shotgun, with the chick driving. Hiro, and the younger salaryman and the last guy were riding with them. We'd figured it was best to have the Alphard in front of the ASLAV, and behind the hatchback for when we were driving. The good thing was we all had radios so we could talk to one another. It was better that way because more eyes watching meant we were less likely to miss something.

Even discounting the occassional gunshot, which was sporadic and in different locations our cars were probably the noisiest things around. Naturally we needed to keep an eyeout, both for other possible survivors, and radioing in an zombies.

That was going to be one thing to talk to mr. Takagi about. Getting radios set up would be ideal for communicating with survivors, unfortunately you'd have to tell them. It meant we needed a frequency to communicate on, and a way to tell people. Those noise vans were one option, but if the emergency broadcast speakers had back up generators that might be safer, and less costly on supplies, but I'd bring up both. Hopefully Mr Takagi had gotten radios of his own, since he'd known that sooner or later the power was going to go out. I was kind of hoping that'd be the case since after a couple of more days I expected survivors would running low on supplies, particularly water if they hadn't been able to grab supplies before they started hiding.

Other than the school the highway might yield things worth taking. There had to be something in some of those abandonned cars we could use, and maybe even get some of them started. I couldn't really say anywhere else that we hadn't been. Most likely though the 'Don' had started moving through the location they'd marked off on the maps.

The barricade was still up when we got there which was a good sign. This time though we had four vehicles instead of two, and two of them weren't very reinforced. As we'd gotten up on the area we'd switched up positions, and the Humvee and the ASLAV had run down zombies as best as possible to clear a path, but it had only been about a day and a half so there weren't that many zombies. The few that were left well hopefully our gun shots would get the attention of Mr. Takagi's people.

We didn't have to wait that long on that account. Of course getting inside was a bit more complicated. In the last day the Takagi's had apparently gotten more people as far as I could tell, and they'd put them to work. There were new, if makeshift, barricades that had been put up. Some of the barricades were simply furniture, others components were stripped cars. These were most likely those that were actually damaged by the EMP, or had something else wrong with them. The most solid parts of these new barriers were those more like the ones established at the border of their 'territory' actual concrete dividers.

Behind these were braced a small collection of 'men-at-arms' in the ultra nationalist 'uniform' along with a large and billowing Imperial Japanese Flag. There armaments were a rather varied collection of guns, supported by a line of spears in the hands of other men. I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised that the Takagi's would have proper spears, as opposed to the makeshift ones other people had made. As it was Mr. Takagi was probably expanding his organization, or more members were making there way here, or some combination of both. In any case it was clear that the defensive readiness of the estate had increased since the EMP.

They'd also by the looks of it started piecing together more living and communal space for survivors if the soup kitchen was any indication. Whatever the state of their defenses we received a hearty welcome as the flag was lifted and waved in our direction as we rolled past. I think the people from the mall appreciated it... even if it was the Sunburst flag.

"You've returned." Saya's old man was as blunt as ever, "We're still working on gathering supplies the EMP has complicated our initial plans." He still had that sword on his belt, but no gun.

I didn't get that to me it made no sense even if I'd seen what Saeko could do with hers. "For now if you need more supplies we brought this lot from the Taei Mall," I told him. Now would definitely be the time to go get the supplies from there if he had the vehicles to move the stuff. Given by the expansion of vehicles, and more importantly the addition of another fuel truck to the one they already had, I figured he did. Still I could definitely believe the bit about the EMP complicating shit.

There was a little bit of small talk from there. It was surprising in what all could happen in a little over a day. Mr. Takagi's mechanic, Matsudo, had taken charge of repairing vehicles and once that had been accomplished they'd started expanding out to gather supplies.

It had been that which really had forced everybody to start working, which had understandably caused some problems. The power failure however had been the big deal, especially since it meant no more running water, excepting that which had already been pumped to the house. I wondered if there any water tankers in the city, but I kind of doubted it. Of course ships in the harbor would probably have a tank for freshwater... or I was assuming such.

We finally broached the topic of how many other people had come. I had known that, even before we'd gotten there, the Takagi's had had those noise trucks and had been driving out. The Takagi organization had probably started gathering supplies as soon as they secured their home area. The real question was just how many people could they support given the existing discontent.

"We're going back out to look for Takashi's mom, and Rei's dad. Allegedly there is a group of survivors at the elementary school," I knew I didn't sound terribly confident that that would pan out for us, "thats where the police are supposed to be."

Mr. Takagi nodded, "I will be leading from here for a few more days, our plans regarding the dam have not changed." He responded gesturing around. Even with the tents set up the place still looked nearly immaculate even with all the people living in them. "Our focus for now is gathering fuel, water, and food." At my raised eyebrow he continued, "Any weapons we could gather would of course be useful, but there are not likely to be many firearms we can recover."

... "About that," I didn't see the point of taking the dam if the wires didn't work, but I wasn't an electrician. On the other hand I liked having options definitely. The guns we'd nicked from the police station would probably be better but to use here, as well as that Luger Saya's mom had given her daughter. It wasn't like we could do much for them for ammo for those weapons, but it was at least something that could be done. I shouted for Kohta.

It was pretty apparent the people here had accepted the necessity of guns, which certainly explained some of the looks. Some of the guys that had been given 308 ammo before we'd left were even starting to approach. Our, as a whole, group survival depended on sharing resources so the people who were already armed we less likely to complain, especially if we were sharing a vital commodity like ammo.

Kohta took a great deal of care pulling the bag with the guns from the Police evidence lock up down. I wasn't surprised, this time, when Kohta immediately launched into a detailed dissertation on each weapon we'd gotten from the station.

Willingly parting with the guns wasn't really something I was overly keen on, but there was a more critical need than we had. There was also fact that there was an actual organization here, certainly more than our group had. We did have our own guns, and reserves... not particularly deep reserves of course.

Once the issue of the guns had been dealt with, and Mr. Takagi had been suitably briefed on what we could give him he made some brief statement about finding people responsible enough for the weapons. I had only vague ideas what that could mean. Armaments wise his people had been comprised fairly diverse... though I'd yet to see an AK variant of any kind. That, by my experience was weird. On the other other hand I'd seen a few members with older M16s, and another with an FAL, plus other Western forces weapons. All Western, mainly Cold War, weapons nothing OpFor so far... well discounting the vz 61.

Mr. Takagi effectively marched us into his spacious house. He also showed us what he meant by 'any weapons we could gather would of course be useful,'. They weren't modern but in a concealed space like this you could cram a lot of ammo, as my ASLAV attested. Hirano was already pretty much drooling over them. All of them, an entire crate of Arisaka rifles, had been recrowned sometime recently maybe not super recently but definitely in the last year.

If I was guessing right he was waiting until he had to to hand these out. Still he liked collecting old weapons the Skorpion Machine pistol had been one thing, but the old Browning and the Luger had been a bit ridiculous.

I wouldn't have been surprised if Takagi had more crates of the Arisakas lying around, even if he didn't ten of them were ten rifles that wouldn't have been available otherwise.

I made a mental note to try and catalog what all weapons the people here at the estate were currently running around with. Most of them were using cold war era weapons, or a motley collection of shotguns. A number of the latter had probably been been gathered from other sources after this mess had started. The cold war weapons though had probably been already here. What was it Takashi had said... 'ultranationalists are scary'.

Even if that was true they were prepared and competent, and that was the important thing at the moment. Political ideology wasn't important at this juncture. At some point in the future that kind of thing might become important, but right now there were more important things to worry about.

Since we'd arrived at the Takagi estate, on the second day of the outbreak, today in the dimming gray of the winter afternoon its easy to see the changes. Things were coming together, but so were more people here. The biggest change I could see was where they'd boarded up windows, and uprooted the small decorative trees that had been planted. The latter had been done to make room for more large green army tents.

The surrounding area had been blocked off. I didn't really know if I agreed with the Takagi plan to run given this was safe, but for now that wasn't an issue. We still had to check out that elementary school. That was for tomorrow however.

-scene break-

Shimada was talking about trying to make it back to his work, which seemed like a good idea. A construction site would probably have more of those concrete dividers, and if nothing else those could be put to good use. "and with concrete and razor wire..." In the interim he was getting quized on what all might be available by Kohta... the big guy looked a little quesy actually.

Kohta's house was actually were we were holed up at. It was in the same neighborhood, and thus like the rest of '2 Choome', which I still had no idea what that was supposed to mean... maybe it was a bird or something, already cordoned off the Takagi Group.

Ishi was talking about how his dad was an electrical engineer for Mitsubishi's solar initiative, which was useful since Ishi knew where his dad worked. I was certainly not going to forget where the possibility lay to get more electricity. Having a place to run a space heater, or another stove... or hell if there were enough to run a house that'd be great. Of course a lot of that was contingent on finding Ishi's dad, or someone he worked with. In all honesty the chances of that might not be that great.

Tomorrow though would be the defining factor. Going to check out the elementary... and checking back at the High School. "What do you think of the gun fire?"  
"Could be the Yakuza, or maybe its the police." Takashi answered. "Either way we'll have to be careful when we venture out." I think between us he'd finally stepped away from the eager anticipation of the Defense rolling in and fixing everything.

The city was lost we'd be looking at months of fighting, and picking up pieces to clear out the zombies with out a drastic military response, and I just couldn't see the Japanese making the choice to level wide swathes of Tokonosu, even now. "Yeah," I looked out the balcony. Kohta's house was a lot more modernist, or post modernist, or whichever architecture school this was than the more classical Takagi estate. It was still a very nice, and reasonably large two storey building. We were really going to have to do something about the big window in the kitchen though. "chances are its a bunch of different people." So a bunch of people scattered through out a zombie infested city just shooting off with no real idea of who they were.

They say hindsight is twenty twenty. I had packed my five bags in the hypothetical scenario based on my own preconceptions. Things like being in America, and where I'd more likely be able to quickly get home and access other guns if needed to. A part of that had been packing lite when it came to bring extra guns, I was really reretting not adding something like a G3 to the list... or a Knights Armament M110C or even my Finnish bolt action. Rifles were what was going to keep us alive. There was no helping it though, at least not until we could find another 308 rifle, chances were one of the police stations might have something. If they didn't well there was always pulling the Sig that was still in the bag out.

We'd pretty much sprawled out across Kohta's second storey. Well Tamaru, and Shimada were actually staying next door... it seemed the neighboors had left a key under a flower vase on the walkway. Originally they'd been planning to stay up at the Takagi's, especially with Tamaru now carrying the Gen 4 Glock 26. Tomorrow him, and Shimada were actually supposed to be 'patrolling' the outer domain of the estate with some of the other guys. Chances were that once we got back from the elementary they'd ask Kirika and me, and probably the others too to start taking watch as well when we weren't out looking for supplies, which we'd probably be doing a lot of.

Everyone knew what we were going to do tomorrow... the question was, "What are we going to do after we find Takashi's mom?" Ishi voiced. Shimada looked at him, or more accurate took the chance to jump out of Kohta's 'lets recreate deadman's land' planning.

"I reckon guns are the big thing, but we need other stuff." He grunted, "if we can clear the roads I can drive a flatbed, which means we won't have to worry as much about leaving stuff like we did at the mall."

Well that was a plan, "Its a good idea." And Shimada had a point, there chokepoints across the city where people had en masse abandonned their cars. Add to that we were probably going to have to clear the bridge to get to his work, which was one of the worst. I headed down towards the first floor.

Saya would be staying at her house, obviously, given it was her house, but the rest of 'our group' were moving in here. Shimada and Tamaru moving in next door just happened to be convinient for planning, and besides it wasn't like we were that far from the Takagi house. "Well? I shrugged at here. Tomorrow was really going to be what decided what we were going to do.

"Your dad find anything out about Shintoko?"

She gave me a curt look, "Just that there are a lot of people converging there, that many refugees surely some of them are infected..." She was probably right, residential and commericial areas, or the areas around them were probably swamped in the undead. The roads were dangerous, people were going to try and save whatever they could and get to where ever was supposed to be safe. She gave an annoyed sigh, "And Yoshioka would like to talk about mounting one of the machine guns as a stationary guard post..." Of course he did.

-scene break-

Helltanz's notes: alright this concludes arc one hopefully I'll be able to pull my data off my dead hard drive, in which case I'll probably redo this chapter later.


	11. Chapter 11 Bloody Mess

-scene break-

The last week... The last week and a half had been a real bitch. It had however had its ups, as well as its downs. We were definitely a bit better off on the weapons front, which while certainly nice given we were in a zombie apocalypse didn't help with everything. The break down of social order meant no more municipal service. For example no more fire department.

I did quick, slightly paranoid, once over of the rifle while I sat in the cupola. Tokunosu was getting sketchy, the town was a mess and there were plenty of zombies, and crazy survivors to make supply runs problematic. The rains, and the low temperatures made things unpleasant but they were keeping the fires down. Of course on that front we were having to watch out for liquified natural gas from the heating units of plenty of the buildings. It really complicated the process of moving between buildings.

After the power had failed was when things had really gotten out of hand. The Self Defense forces had attempted an evacuation, but it'd been prioritized to get the elderly, children, and ill out of the city. Attempted was the emphasis. There were still couple thousand people in Tokunosu holding out still for the moment according to the SDF estimates had gathered from flying over head.

They had said they were moving them up north, allegedly to somewhere in Hokkaido. They just didn't have the lift capacity for on evacuation at the moment, but they were attempting to find and get one of their engineering brigades to the airport on the artificial island off the coast to create a fall back point nearer to Tokunosu. Allegedly. There had only been one run so far, and that had been getting the oldest people and the kids out. They hadn't even been able to airlift all of them out.

Of course that had been before the LNG terminal at the docks had blown. The fire had complicated the situation, and chances were natural gas stored in other parts of the city had a good chance of getting sparked as well. It did however give the military an excuse to give other than we just don't have the lift capacity. What I really wanted was to quiz some engineer who worked with the stuff, or hell even a technician. The dock fire had ended, at the very least temporarily, any ideas about trying to get aboard a ship. The fact that the JMSDF had left sign of Tokunosu bay didn't help us any either. So here we were.

The Takagi estate was just one of several enclaves now in Tokunosu, rumor was in the east side wards the Yakuza were running the show, but we hadn't checked on that. Chances were it wasn't something to fuck with. "Whats up?" a femine voice asked across the radio. I glanced side long at Minami's position across the street. Shizuka's friend had gotten dropped off by the Self Defense Force, and she was expecting another one of her navy friends to make his way back here eventually. "Its another roving group,"

As if the zombies weren't bad enough there were roving groups of crazy humans. Some of them had picked up shotguns, others had revolvers that they'd probably taken from wrecked police cars, and others had various other weapons. The only good thing was they were hostile to the zombies. The barricades along the road also made solid chokepoints to stifle roving zombies. In this case we were looking down at a burned out bus, and a handful of ruined cars blocking the intersection. "What do you think they're looking for?"

"Food probably," I'd believe it, it was what we ended up looking for, most days "Or maybe they're going to the school," I really hoped not considering the High School was precisely where we were heading.

Ishi swallowed lowering his binoculars. "Takashi's cutting it a little close," He muttered, as the other half of the team skirted up the road.

We didn't really have a choice though the roads were narrow, and a number of them were blocked off by one thing or another. If it wasn't crashed cars, it was burned out ones, hell one of the bridges had gotten hit by a news helicopter. This city was a mess, and really all coherent central command and control had collapsed. On the plus side for Takashi he was with Kohta, and Minami and on top of that they had the Humvee. On the other hand he was driving said humvee. We figured sooner was better, seeing as he was going to have to learn sometime.

There was an abrupt grinding of tires as Takashi gunned the engine, and hopped the curve. I dropped back down into the drivers compartment holding the EBR vertical and followed. There was whirring slightly as the turrent turned. It was deterent more than anything, firing the bushmaster would probably just cause more trouble than anything. "What are they doing?"

"They definitely see us," Ishi called down from the turrent, from where he was looking through the gunner's sight. Well it was little fucking hard to miss the two vehicles we were driving, the question was whether they were going to follow us to the school.

I unclipped the radio, "Takashi pull over, and swap up with Minami." There was a metallic 'tink' sound of a round bouncing off metal. "Motherfuckers," I turned the corner after a burst of automatic fire bounced off the street, "what the fuck's that?"

"They've got an MP5A4," Kohta rattled off as Takashi scrambled into the passenger side, "They must have gotten it from one of the Kidotai,"

Right... "I... have I mentioned how convulted your police force is?" I grunted... I didn't understand the City's Police procurement... not that I was really serious about complaining either. From how it was explained to me the Japanese Swat... and Riot Police were freaking tiny, relative to the population. That, and between the three of them, that was including the regular cops, Tokunosu had a vast disparity of gear. It was explained later that the SAT, wasn't locally controlled.

"Whats wrong with it, can an American really talk about that?" Minami joked, as she put the Humvee back into gear and sped off. I wasn't really worried about the psychos down the road, at least when it came to us. The M1025 body was armored against rifle rounds, the tires were roll flat, and even at close range the glass would stand up to fire from an AK... at least for a little while I was even less concerned about them shooting the the ASLAV.

I tapped the accelerator, "yeah yeah," We drove the rest of the detour, including going the wrong way down a one way street, to the school. The main gate was closed, which might have been a good sign. "No sign of zed," I muttered looking through gunnery sight, on the other hand it looked like the other minivans were still here. Somebody however had been burning bodies though judging from the stench, and the smoke coming up from the yard. Chances were the gate had gotten closed before the EMP hit, of course that was just an assumption. Ishi clambered down the side, and I followed hopping off the back, as Takashi and Kohta made their way over. Saya had been the first one to completely ditch her school uniform, but by this point we'd gotten the chance to pick over more than one clothing stores. Even had enough winter jackets, that fit well, tucked away for when it got really cold.

"There are barricades on the front," Takashi commented tugging at his benelli's sling. "Looks like they broke apart desks and furniture." From the looks of it they'd probably had nail guns and drills and a bunch of other tools to put things together. "We can get a van though, I don't know if we should try and go in."

Kohta nodded, "It could be booby trapped." He gestured to the half boarded up windows, "Or maybe they're still getting material," So they might have been half way done. "I don't think they have any guns though."

"I've got movement, two o'clock, rooftop." Minami called from the cupola of the Humvee, "It looks like it could be a student... human." She eased the pricy HK rifle down, and away from pointing at the roof.  
Well that answered whether there were survivors, "Think they're going to come down? I mean the Don said he didn't have space for more people just yet, and the elementary is going to have the same problems." Give it the end of the week, and the whole block around the house would be obstensibly secure, but right there were still open areas.

The definitive issue was supplies to keep people alive seeing as the power was gone. The Takagi estate could expand throughout their neighborhood, but a bunch of their fighters were either always out gathering supplies or holding down the dam. I had no idea whether they'd actually be able to get the hydro electric dam functional again. Of course part of the bad news was the high voltage lines were probably screwed from the EMP. The good news was they might be able to get water running though, and that would certainly help though. Tap water might not have been the best for drinking. It would however mean people would have easy access to water that they could boil.

"If they've held up this long they should be fine for a few more days. Maybe we can get Shimada to come with us tomorrow." Kohta remarked, before stopping, "I think I see a teacher." He did the smart thing and used his binoculars as opposed to his AR to check the window. "I think they're arguing,"

Minami turned, "Probably wont come down with us here, even if you drove up to the school before the outbreak they probably won't trust us." Nobody could be blamed for that kind of thinking, and if they weren't going to come down and we weren't going to go in there wasn't a point to staying.

"Do you think the SDF did a head count?" Ishi asked. We're the Japanese Airborne had stopped in to exfiltrate a group of survivors they had showed Inspector Miyamoto where, on a map of the city, the largest cluster of survivors were based. That was how we know about the gangsters in the east, a warning not go out that way.

-scene break-

Saeko closed the side on the Beretta, and set the safety on. Shizuka groaned throwing her head back as she sat on the couch. One of the roving bands had clashed with men from the Takagi estate, and well a couple of guys had caught the wrong end of buckshot, and bullets.

As it stood one of the guys probably wasn't going to make it through the night. Luckily though even grabbing cop guns firearms were pretty scarce amongst the mobs. Not that it meant a whole lot, it only took one, and most of the fuckers were crazy enough to rush people. It was fucking surprising they hadn't been eaten by zombies. The toilet flushed, and a still quesy looking Tamaru came out a minute later. He'd left the glock on the kitchen counter when he'd gone in.

Shimada, who had decided to take up wearing a salvaged, from a dead riot cop, ballistic vest looked up from the other couch. "So what are we going to do about the school?"

"Make sure they know to take precautions, maybe help them with their defenses, but food is going to be the big thing." Power, or at least from the hydro electric dam wasn't back on, but we had water at least. Apparently the Takagi's had been working on it since they had gotten there. Of course with out power there wasn't any mass refrigeration, which meant food types were pretty limitted. Food was going to be everyone's problem. "even if we could get solar set up most of the food that needs it has already spoiled."

Ishi stopped and turned, "What if we don't have to set up the solar pannels though?" He started ruffling through the backpack he'd grabbed at the mall. Earlier we'd managed to drive over and hit their houses again. Rei and her parents of course were staying at the Shintoko Elementary camp, but there were at least survivors in their neighborhood. Ishi tossed the paperwork he'd found in his dad's office on the coffee table. "We don't need to set up the panels, its entirely possible the refridgerators in houses like this still have fresh food." That was assuming of course they hadn't been over run, set on fire, or looted.

Kohta picked up one of the sheets. He read it and handed it to Takashi. Really it was the best lead we had since there wasn't much we were doing. Mr. Takagi was hashing out the political bits with the other factions in the city, and the military just didn't have the lift capacity, or possibly the jet fuel, to evacuate everyone so were pretty stuck here. It pretty much boiled down to staying alive long enough for the situation to normalize, which if it didn't soon food would start getting scarce because shipments weren't coming in.

"Papa wants us to go to the docks," Saya remarked reviewing another paper, "We'll be looking for food there, and anything else we can use." Japan exported cars, but it imported amongst things like food and fuel. Both of which were very important to our continued survival.

Minami nodded, "There is also food still stored at the airport, which should still be cleared of the undead." The down side was the military had probably picked the airport clean of weapons, which didn't help the Takagi situation. The neighborhood was pretty well secured, and Shintoko elementary, and the Yakuza in the south seemed to be following similiar cues for area security. Most likely so would any other larger survivor groups. If the Takagi's were making a move on the docks chances were other people were thinking about it as well.

"When's he want to do it?" It wasn't like there was anything better to do, and we didn't plan on splitting up to go to different places with the city like it was. It was one thing to split up, and have part of the group stay in the Takagi's neighborhood, or for Takashi and Rei to be at Shintoko while some of us were some where else. It was however something completely different to suggest having the group send people to poke around in two different places. Saya's response got a groan, "Fine grab your stuff."

That was how we all ended up piling into three different vehicles. We did have other vehicles, but there was no sense in driving four or five when three would do. Shimada, and Tamaru were taking this vibrant orange Isuzu flatbed while the rest of split between the Humvee, and the ASLAV. It seemed like both Yoshioka and Mr. Takagi were tagging along on this thing. "With fire having burned itself out now is the time to search the docks, we must be careful though roving groups of mad men may have already clamored to the scene." Mr. Takagi boomed over the radio, "Constant vigilance will be needed." That was pretty much all he said though as we started rumbling down the road.

"So did your dad mention what all we're looking for?" Food shipments maybe, I would have thought he might have going after oil but he hadn't brought the fuel trucks along.

It was Kohta who answered, "We don't really know whats all at the docks, but securing raw materials like wood would bolster the Takagi ability to reinforce their defenses. Concrete too would be really good," While not directly involved in defense planning Kohta's immense stock of diagrams of fixed defenses from previous military conflicts were piled up or laid across tables in the Takagi planning room in the mansion. So while Kohta wasn't directly involved the nationalists had few people who knew the information as well as him. Of course with limitted guns the implementation of such defenses took on a very anachronistic layout.

The docks of Tokunosu looked like a warzone, even this far from the Natural Gas Terminal. Where most the city was just empty the docks had a strech of charred black concrete and blown out buildings from when the terminal blew. All that had been really clear was that at the end of the first week something had sparked terminal, and the fire had spread to a liquified natural gas container tanker moored. Maybe the fire had been human error, or maybe it'd been sparked by lightning from the rain storm. No one was sure either way. Even in the face of over a dozen burned out buildings and a handful of sunk ships in the harbor there were likely millions of dollars worth of goods still in the intact buildings, or on ships in the harbor.

A handful of junior officers clambered out carrying freshly cleaned Arisaka rifles, and moved to open the gate. The Takagi's method of distributing weapons was a bit picky, but for the most part based on skill. Minami pulled herself out of the cupola of the Humvee adjusting her PSG 1 as Mr. Takagi stood on top of the pedestal and started barking orders at his assembled men.

Yoshioka walked up with his M16A1 slung over his shoulder, even with new options he was still sticking with the older rifle. "We'll have some of the men search the administrative building," That was fine with me so we rolled past the wire fence, and put it to park before clamoring into the turrent as Minami, and Takashi clambered out of the Humvee. Kohta popped the cupola, and we basically sat there for a good half hour before shouting started.

I didn't know the guy, hadn't met him before this, who'd ended up getting whacked across the head with a plank. He was ... fine besides pbvopis;u having gotten hit in the head. "What do you think happened?"

"Well they didn't kill him so not likely the roving band of crazies," who would have probably gone for sheer overkill. They had however taken his shotgun, which meant they had a gun. There were plenty of normal people still out there, people who hadn't gone off the deep end who were hold up in their houses occassionally sneaking out to go get supplies. I didn't see many people chancing the docks, not when there were other places closer, and more accessible.

So chances were though this wasn't the case either. "They didn't take his clothes so chances are they'll stand out,"Minami remarked.

"But would that matter," Kohta interjected assuming his thinking pose, they probably won't look like a threat even if they jumped that nationalist by surpise chances are they won't just look like some common Yakuza guy. Before this they were probably normal people, which the nationalists probably wouldn't take as a serious threat."

Saya puffed up at this, "Are you saying my papa's men are lax?" Kohta launched into a lengthy discourse about how the common soldier in wartime tended to perceive civilians in a warzone complete with anecdotes and how such perceptions had caused trouble for military units the world over.

We still were basically just sitting around an hour later. There was still no answer to the curious question of where exactly the stockpile of the Takagi's world war II, and cold war weapons came from, but it was clearly limitted... not that that really meant much. Yoshioka had already taking to wearing, at least while we were out, what was probably 'Nam era webbing in addition to the M16 he carried. If it had just been him wearing it though I'd have just figured it was surplus he'd bought, which still could be the case. Before all of this, maybe even before Mr. Takagi had been their leader, they must have been stockpiling weapons, and equipment.

The Yakuza obviously had had guns stockpiled. I'd gotten to finally see an AK that was on Japanese soil... from admittedly several hundred yards away. It meant the big three, and that was ironic naming more than anything, in a situation where there was a massive mismatch of guns both internally, and when dealing with each other. Shotguns were pretty much the only truly common element in usage from observation. Best thing is most were 12 ga, and pretty much everyone was sticking to 2 3/4 even.

The police, or rather the ones who were alive, defending Shintoko third were... at least equipped to a mostly common standard. The highest ranking police officer was Detective Miyamoto... Rei's dad, who had told here on day 1 she should flee Tokunosu and find some place to hide. Shintoko third elementary was the centerpiece of police prescence, just like the Takagi estate was for the nationalists. The Takagi at least had access to rifles in bulk, relatively speaking though, the police by and large were stuck using semiautomatic handguns, and revolvers. It was true they did have a handful of M1500 rifles too. The plus side was of course the cops of Tokunosu had more personel and more shotguns relative to the other two groups. Benelli, Remington, and Mossberg for the most part it seemed.

I glanced at Takashi as the blue and white Mitsubishi Fuso rolled down the road towards us. I could understand his reasoning for telling Rei's dad. We'd lucked out as far as reasonable authority figures went, or having leverage to work with them. "Hi Takashi-kun," Mrs. Miyamoto greeted with a smile as the collection of policemen dismounted. She was joined by the late twenties something detective Himura, and his senior.

The rest of the police were milling around, and of them I counted two rifles amongst them. A single Howa Type 64, and what I'd guess was a hunting rifle. Getting a better look at it confirmed it was a Howa bolt action in 308. The rest carried a mix of shotguns, berettas and those air weight frame S&W revolvers. Not an H&K amongst them... damn talk about a disappointment. Of course from what we'd seen the survivors of the police force were probably congregating all their MP5s around the refugee camp. Then again pretty much everyone was hording weapons, as much as they could, and given things it made sense.

Mrs. Miyamoto was met with Yoshioka and one of his lieutenants making our little cluster of people rather sizable. Whatever the case was Mrs. Miyamoto was the one who seemed to be in charge, and for anything else they had radios.

"So?" Minami perked, she was with us because of Shizuka. In fact she'd probably stick with us as long as Shizuka was with us, and Minami was focused on keeping her safe. I figured if Minami could get Shizuka out to somewhere safe she'd probably try it. "What are we going to do?"

Himura's partner lit up his cigarette, when he'd first met us he'd been torn between what to do, about our weapons especially. "Cordon off the scene sargeant, if there are any ruffians, or the dead about we'll want to keep them out." He saw the glances, "What?" Relaying the story just put the older detective into more annoyance, "Then we'll set up the cordon and look for them. Himura go get some of the patrolmen." He barked, before turning to Miyamoto. "well this is going to be a mess knowing our luck those of " He used a word that I figured probably meant the Yakuza it might have been a proper name, like an organization, it could have been the local chapter but I didn't know enough to say for sure. "might show up,"

"Its possible Raiga has people on the lookout for vehicles," She remarked. Raiga was probably one of the local bosses, but if he had people on the lookout they'd need someway to communicate, and seeing as the EMP had swatted the cell towers along with the rest of the power grid there weren't many options for speedy communication...

Kohta was looking at the same thing, "Police radios,"  
"What, what was that?"

I pointed a finger at his vest, which was probably rude, but who gave a damn. In hindsight I probably should have pointed back to Minami "How are you communicating, you're using radios, and how many police cars are missing." For that matter, "how much police gear is missing since the EMP." Way too much to hope to track it all down in this sitaution was the answer to that. We had definitely been taking what we could, when we found it. It was entirely possible of course that the Yakuza had other radios supplied from whatever the local equivalent to radio shack was, which no doubt they could have raided in all the chaos. We ourselves had picked over one such car a couple days ago, and I knew the Takagi's had access as well to salvaged police radios, which in itself could be useful down the road.

The comment lead to brief silence, and Himura was already off organizing the cops to help with the cordon. We didn't really end up seeing anything for more than an hour. I still had no idea what they were even really here for... well actually we were here as a security reassurance, which was fine I just would have felt better knowing why we were here.

In short we spent an hour sitting on the vehicles, which was nice because it meant no one was shooting, or getting shot at. The nationalists were poking through the admin building, and probably looking for papers, which hopefully would tell them where things were. Of course there was no telling how much of the dock book keeping was electronic... I'd wager a lot.

We were almost to relaxed when the shooting started. Three shots, rapid fire and panicked. From that we knew it was not one of the arisakas, but it could have been one of the revolvers. Hell if I hadn't had eyes on Tamaru I'd have wondered if it hadn't been him shooting. Shimada, bottled water still in one hand clambered up into the flatbed's cab.

Fuck most likely somebody had stumbled upon a walker. "Compose yourselves!" Mr. Takagi shouted to the men, "Form into ranks, search building to building, and we will find who ever is missing."

Everyone in the cluster exchanged glances, and the nationalists started getting into formation. Then there was another gunshot, different from the first, and the metallic noise following it confirmed the bullet richoted off something inside one of the warehouse. That was when the screaming started, in the best case scenario ... that one warehouse was where the issue was, and they weren't spread out. I turned my rifle scope towards the warehouse.

The next thing we know there was a bunch of teenagers, who looked like they had been tossed into the drink, and spent the last several days living in the burned out warehouse, running clear of the building. There were no zombies, but we did find the missing Arisaka though, apparently Hide, one of the two guys, had smacked the downed junior officer from behind with the piece of wood. One of the nationalists had heard them ruffling about in the warehouse and panicked thinking it was a walker, and then fled. His shots had been thankfully wide, and were lodged in wooden crate. The people he'd heard had fled the other way, stumbling and dropping the arisaka in the process. Old gun, plus sharp impact with loaded chamber equals accidental discharge. It wasn't rocket science, and it kind of a relief... on the other hand it was still a ruckus.

"We will have to come back, besides we must hope that it is possible to recover data from the computers," Mr. Takagi swept an arm towards the ships, "And then of course there are other places to search." It was about that time he gestured towards one of the open shipping containers... what the fuck... I knew the whole world had gone to hell, but zombies you could deal with.

There was a half eaten rotting corpse, yeah thats disgusting... I wasn't even listening to Mr Takagi's speech at this point. As if it wasn't that bad there were than one in the container. Mr. Takagi was choosing to ignore the people not paying attention, especially as some of the guys closer to the container started backing away. Zombies were one thing, but I guess living people eating corpses was just a bit too much for most people, myself included.

"What-"  
Minami was going to explain but Mrs. Miyamoto beat her to the punch, "Human trafficking," Like we really needed a reminder that even with the issue of the walking dead, there were a bunch of human bastards too. The people who had been in this crate could be still out there, and if they were they were stuck in a chaotic with probably no grasp of the language. The problem was the people who had locked them in the crate were probably still out there to. Desperate people, and confused people did desperate things.

There was no telling what kind of mess they could be getting into, then again there was no proof they were alive either. Takashi looked over to Rei's mom for guidance.

"This is some fucked up shit," Shimada grumbled leaning out the cab window of the flatbed, "man we should leave." We probably should, but we were going to have to come back later the Takagi were looking for supplies after all.

-scene break-


	12. Chapter 12 Transition

Transition

-scene break-

The first external news broadcast came off of Satellite radio... the president was dead. Later on we started getting other radio sources, but that was the first. He'd been aboard air force one had apparently crashed after ordering a nuclear strike. That was the last coherent piece about the Federal Government. Elements of what was probably 23rd Air Wing had been called up for a air to ground strike on Atlanta... apparently they hadn't been the only A 10 units called to do the same to other major cities. By all indications there had been no EMP strike on the continental United States, maybe even the internet was working back home.

Here I was stuck in Japan, and if the Air Force was having to air to ground runs on continental soil help was long time off. I turned the satellite radio set off. It was Thursday, and we hadn't heard any more bout the bloody mess at the docks. I leaned back in the chair in the office where we'd piled up the weapons this morning. "It is going to start getting cold, and Ishi I," We hadn't heard or seen any sign of his dad. It had been a nice idea, but trying to install solar panels on the house without someone who knew what they were doing wasn't a productive use of time... well at least until we were sure we'd picked over everything.

"We just need an electrician we can bolt the panels on ourselves and," Ishi responded, "... the Takagi's only have so much diesel fuel for their generator."  
Saya nodded, "Of course he's right even conserving fuel and finding more from the city we probably don't have enough for winter." We needed fuel for vehicles, fuel for heating, and food preservation probably wouldn't have hurt. Diesel would be simple for what we had on hand, but the Takagi's would need gasoline though some of their vehicles, and that was part of the reason there was such a search for fuel trucks. Saya continued, "The people at the elementary are going to be worse off than us,"

That was true. Not that any one was in a really good situation all things considered given our current situation. The Yakuza had apparently cordonned off an area of public housing, or appartments or some kind of high rise residential building. Like everyone else though they were without power. Still at least most there people had four solid walls.

"Whats our head count?"

Hirano looked up, and grimaced, "We don't have any idea who's barricaded themselves off," It was true the overhead flights had given a rough idea, but plenty of people had moved since then, and more had gotten into trouble. "but there just over three hundred refugees at the estate, and another fifty or so near us." Takagi was going to have to start settling people, because that wasn't counting his organization staff either. "And the elementary has almost a thousand people in the area around it," That might have sounded like a lot, and it was as far as mouths to feed Tokunosu had been a big town. It didn't help almost half of the number at the school were kids either. If most people were still hiding in the homes they wouldn't be able to much longer. There was also the mobs ranging through the streets, and however many people were still at the high school. Ultimately though population density was going to come into play... and that meant hordes of zombies.

"Shimada what do you know about hurricane proofing a house?" I asked checking the Type 54 pistol we'd pulled out of the police evidence lock up. If I wasn't already carrying enough gear I'd have thought about carrying it... might still stash it somewhere in a vehicle though. Of course I probably needed to leave it in the house, secured of course.  
He looked up, "We've got nails, but furniture isn't good for that kind of thing." He stopped to think about it, and rattled off an address "the Home improvement store there will have what we need, probably could hit the mall to," He was right there was probably still junk there. Comforters, beds, pillows, "I can go get the truck," and that was the issue, we were back to fuel. The humvee and ASLAV ran off diesel engines, and we really couldn't afford to waste the fuel using both vehicles, and the flat bed. You got used to having bulletproof hull around you. Armor plated bodies were great comfort rolling through. The car body would keep the zed out to. Of course only taking one vehicle meant most of us stayed back. "We could get a set tools, set up the machine gun the second floor like when America was fighting Germany."

Someone had been talking Hirano about history, "I've got the tools," In addition to the tool kit stored in the ASLAV, well the fourth duffle bag ... it had plenty. I was little worried about stripping the bolts though. "We could remove the commander's mag from the cupola, sticking in the window won't do much good." If the dead got through the barriers we needed to barricade the door if we could before we left the area. If anything Yoshioka's idea to mount it on a vehicle made more sense, or at the gate. The other problem was we didn't have spare barrels. Hirano suggesting the house thing made sense historically, but meant less in our present situation.

I checked my watch as we headed out the door. While going for a supply run made sense there were a few things that needed to be done first. Before all of this Shimada had worked in construction, and Tamaru had been an engineering student. Kohta's books on military history well... his collection was extensive. There was a heavy ring of metal, on metal as one of the other construction workers worked to disoldge the roof of a burned out car.

The idea was to take what we had, supply wise, and work things together. While Kohta, and plenty of those who liked his ideas, suggested the idea of far more pretty things. Yes Kohta's collection spanned five thousand plus years of fortifactions. We didn't have the resources to build star forts, or things like the Schoeber line... though we could approximate something similiar. Well as close we could. Concrete road dividers lined along the road ways, along with high tension cables had been the start, but now the basis for other things were having their foundations laid. Pieces of plywood, and steel rebar were set and then used to hold concrete together. Homemade barbed wire was being fabricated to stretch across the fortifications.

It was when you took it all in together. What was a mish mash of turn of the century, and second world war fortifications and even older types came together. When we'd left we would pass the Takagi's main entrance. It was not the only entrance, but most of the other entrances to the district had been sealed off. Burned out cars, or otherwise non functional ones were being stripped of tires, and in some cases like the one I was watching, having their roof's taken off to be used as fixed stations. What had once been a nice mercedes sedan had been stripped, now boxed in by freshly build concrete and rebar layers, which they were stretching barbed wire around the front. There wasn't a point to barricading upper windows, because we weren't really worrying about return fire.. hopefully it wouldn't come to that. So far though we hadn't had to worry about the mobs , but they'd probably find us, or the school eventually. I stopped by the ASLAV, and put the type fifty four and a box of ammo beside in one the interior storage cabinents.

-scene break-

We piled out into the back lot of the mall and Shimada tossed me the keys. "I'll drive one of the rigs back. It'll give us more space." That was one of the nice things about expanding we didn't have to worry about parking outside the barricades.

Minami, and Hirano were staying back at the big house, which strictly speaking was probably not the best move given it put them too far to help us. Of course if we got into shit, the idea was to run not fucking stand and fight. Besides Shimada had brought up the idea to drive the rig back on the ride over, and he had a point. At least one of the rigs was probably gassed, at least enough to drive to the Takagi estate. We could spend a few hours here. Load what we could in one of the rigs, and then hit the local depot equivalent of home depot.

I checked my watch, "Sounds good to me," and then looked up at the sky. The rain front was annoying, and it was only going to keep up, and eventually turn into snow from what I'd heard. That was going to be a problem, but for now the issue was limitted day light hours. Getting the most out of daylights hours was important, but so was avoiding getting caught in the rain. "How are the other people from the mall holding up?" I hadn't seen much of them after we'd found the refugee camp at Shintoko third, which was why we didn't have Takashi with us today. He was alternating between staying with Rei, and coming over on whomever came or went back to the estate.

"Well they did airlift Granny out so I guess she's alright," Tamaru remarked, "but most of them are still at the elementary."  
Shimada removed the chain to the door that we'd put when we'd left. It had been just a chain no lock of any kind, "I haven't seen police girl, I'd have figured she'd still be trailing after Miyamoto-san," That was true enough. I'd really expected Asami to show up in the transport vehicle that Kirika had shown up in to the docks. Searching the big rigs was, well turned up the usual kind of stuff that were to be expected for supplying a mall... not that industrial lights were going to do us much good in our situation... or big screen televisions.

The mall itself though was still pretty intact after several days. I didn't even want to think what a big mall like this would look like more than a week after the breakdown of social order in America. At somepoint there had to have been people in here after we'd left, but as far as things went not much had changed... well discounting the occassional blood smeer outside where most likely someone had gotten eaten. Corpses piling up was actually starting to be a problem, and given that it was a health hazard the Takagi, and the police had set up large scale bonfires to burn the bodies in some of the parks.

The mall though was pretty much the same. It wasn't much different from a mall back in the US, well discounting the grocery store on the ground floor. The floor up from that was pretty much equivalent to the shopping court rather like what they had in Japan. Internationalism at work I supposed. We pretty circled off on the second floor and hit the bed, and other house furnishings section. What we were going to do was basically a rough way of insulating the house, stuff like insulated curtains was one thing, but putting down blankets, and just having extra blankets was also what we wanted to do. The real notable differences would be nailing boards to windows, which hopefully we'd be able to get at our next stop. There were a couple other items we were picking up at the mall, but we'd stocked up on winter clothes, and shoes, which was good thing. It looked like the people from Shintoko third had come by to pick up winter clothes for the people there. I said this because there was an inventory left marked with a police lettermark heading in a couple of the stores. It was a nice gesture, but seemed kind of pointless all things considered.

Preparing for social collapse in theory was fun and games, trying to survive a hostile enviroment with winter fast approaching less fun. It was why stockpiling non perishable food, and bottled water had been so important. It would have been nice if Tokunosu had been located further south on the Island of Honshu, but it was really lucky that we weren't further north up. As it was, from a handy guidebook, and just talking with people, the worst was going to be once the new year started.

Malls were pretty much universal, discounting variance for region with regards to shops, and supermarkets were pretty similiar too. The local home depot equivalent though was like they'd mixed in with a supermarket, and once again an aisle for rice. What we really needed was to survive through the snow though, and figure what we were going to do after that. Because certain ammo types were going to be getting scarce, and the rest would follow soon after that if we weren't careful.

I had no idea whether the pipes pumping us water would be okay through the worst of winter. In all likelihood they probably would, but the year after if we were still here would they be then? Of course by that point we should be long since gone. Hell I didn't know anything about growing crops in Japan we probably needed to be gone... not that sea travel would easier, and Air traffic control was gone... not that we had a pilot. Make the best of what we could get our hands on for right now was about all we could do.

-scene break-

"Sensei why do you have pruning sheers in your bag?" Ishi asked as we were sitting on the patio watching as most people finished up for the day. The Japanese apologized for weird stuff... like that old man at lunch today apologizing for how my first time in country was stuck in a miserable end of the world scenerio. I swallowed the last bit of tea in my cup, as Kohta started back on about the progression of things.

"Shintoko isn't doing as well," as well as here, which was sad all things considered.

I glanced at him, "You mean the elementary, why's that?" I asked, most likely they were having trouble again. The ultranationalists were maintaining order because their organization had a support staff... that was to say members had families and friends helping them. There were people taking shelter here that weren't affiliated, but when your options were what they were, most people towed the line. Of course even that was a temporary solution. There were ideological disagreements, and they were going to be a problem here too.

"They about had a riot today. They thought somebody might have been infected because he had a scrape from an accident." He looked away, "its like some of them are just going crazy. They don't want to listen to anybody,"

I wondered if that was why Rei wasn't here. If Takashi hadn't voiced these same concerns to her while they'd been getting ready. "Not much that can be done."

"The Takagi hold the strategically important dam," Kohta interjected, "it means we have fresh water. The engineer says that while the dam could transmit power to the city the step up step down transformers are ruined." It was the reason the Takagi's were transferring 'vital' electronics to the dam to be powered.

Takashi glanced at him, "What does that have to do with anything?" He asked as Hirano pulled out his waterproof map of the area. Abruptly he turned to me, but Kohta answered him.

"The police are weak, and the ground forces don't have a direction. There is a historical rivarly between the ground forces and the navy. Inspector Miyamoto hasn't been able to convince the ground forces to subordinate themselves to him, and for now they're staying at the edge of the city in a tight cordon." Kohta traced his finger up, along the road that lead to the dam, "The dam is the most important structure in the city's area, it provides water to the whole city, and its outside police control. The civilians at the school know this, even if its not hurting them." Kohta slapped his hand down, "The police have a hard time exerting control, because the impression of them is that they're weak. Enganging the zombies isn't doing enough to counter act this, and the lack of action by the self defense force is worsening morale."

Saya nodded taking a sip of her own tea, "In the mean time my papa's men are moving construction equipment up to the dam, and reinforcing our position here." Takashi reeled, and looked at her, "It would be better if the police simply came to work for my papa."

"Inspector Miyamoto would never agree to that though." Takashi protested, and he was right. Why would the inspector do that... even if he wanted to do why come work when you knew that there were soldiers holding a defensive line waiting for further orders. Of course they were orders that probably weren't going to come any time soon.

I leaned back, "look we're not going to be able to do much. There is a low guns per person ratio," it was true that we were also, like other people, keep guns tucked away in reserve, and well I don't think anyone could be faulted for that. "and well there just aren't enough rifles to really take a more proactive stance, and besides we'd still have to do building clearing any way. So we're stuck like this for the forseeable future. So what do you want to do?"

"I..." Takashi shrugged, and groaned, "The school's a mess, and my mom's not going to come here, and you're right Inspector Miyamoto won't either. Nothing is going back to normal."

I poured another cup, and snorted. "Stay here then. You'll actually be doing some good here, and besides you need more practice driving." Tch if we had the gas to spare it'd be worth it to teach Kohta too, but we needed him to shoot more than we needed him behind a wheel. "We've got the spare rooms in the house." and even if we didn't we could double up, or he could go grab a guest room with the Takagi mansion." God I missed coffee and soda being readily available, caffeine withdrawal was a bitch. "So what else?"

"We have to do something."

Saya crossed her arms, "We can't the adults there refuse to listen to us." She responded, and the only reason the adults here did listen to them was because of Mr. Takagi, or his wife. "They won't listen to us, and so we can't help them."

-scene break-

The spent shell casing went out and hit the ground with an unheard ding as it hit the HVAC unit on the rooftop. Yeah there was no point sticking around. As if the random mobs of undead were bad enough, and of course the buildings infected were trouble we'd found most the cities population. Japan's public rails were overrun, and the tunnels were probably filled with the dead in the pitch black underground. The self defense must have already known as someone had fired an air to ground missile at one of the subway trains at some point. It could have been a chopper or a fighter there wasn't anyway to tell without more information.

"Lets go already," Saya grunted performing the same cursory and paranoid sweep of the corner looking for any dead that might have snuck up. There weren't any but not checking would have been stupid in our situation. The cars were waiting, with one of the Takagi junior officers, Jin something, sitting behind the wheel of the alphard while one of the others held an M16A1 exactly like what Yoshioka was always carrying.

We needed to leave. We probably needed to collapse, barricade or somehow stymie the entraces to the subways because the dead were pouring out. That evil droning of the zombies making plenty of noise on its own given the size of the horde... yes it was time to leave. I'd leave this to the Takagi to figure out while we worked on reinforcing the barricades. Even now Shimada and some of the other construction workers were supposed to be pouring concrete, and laying rebar to form walls. While it probably wasn't the best construction it would hold, especially given it wasn't just one line. It would however half to be enough, because there wasn't much in the way to run off to.

The ride back was quiet enough. A kilometer, even three is not particularly far. Its even less so when one filters in cars, more so without needing to obey traffic regulations. The forming of concrete barricades was a fairly simple task, perhaps manpower intensive but none of these foundations needed to hold up multiple stories.

With the second district secure the surviving populace safeguarded by the Takagi Group, or whatever their organization's proper name was, were slowly being spread out. Kohta had likened to a feudal castle set up, which was ironic seeing as there was actually a castle in town. Takashi was waiting past one of the intersections, which was a little surprising since he normally stuck to well inside the inner sanctum when he was here. "Whats up,"  
"We're just waiting for you," Takashi toyed with the sling of his shotgun, and I could see what he meant. Shintoko might have been the largest refugee camp, but there were plenty of the younger generation here at the Takagi estate, even if most of Takashi's surviving classmates who'd chosen to stick together were still bunkered down at their high school. We hadn't really seen much of Shidou either, or many of the other teachers so it left Shizuka in charge of kindergarten through grade twelve for the most part basically. There were handful of college students, like Tamaru, who got treated like adults, but for anyone younger who didn't have a weapon they didn't get that courtesy.

We walked down the way and into the backyard community park thing, of course it wasn't much of a park anymore. Not after a truck had come driving through the fence and hit a tree. It had wrecked the well tended green and stone, and pond. After the truck burned out some of the Takagi junior officers and survivors had been put to pushing it out. The truch had gotten rolled out, and built into a makeshift barricade. Right now there was one of the Takagi guys sitting on top of it, with a Ruger mini 14. We passed him, and his partner by, by, and settled and settled on only lightly charred bench. The fire hadn't been particularly bad, there was too much stone in the park and not enough fuel to really spread anything.

Saya's father was no doubt within the main complex waiting, but from the radio they sat on the desk I could guess what was going on. The Japanese national alert system must of been broadcasting something new on repeat. The effective collapse of the civil government meant that updates were lucky that they were happening at all. I didn't even want to think what Tokyo, and the other major population centers must have been like.

Sitting here let the high schoolers try and at least try and help in a way that wasn't manual labor. It just wasn't feasible not to let them help that way, because between salvaging (looting), searching, or putting defenses together everyone needed an extra pair of hands. It was a just a facet of desperate times after the first week most got over the idea of preventing those rapidly approaching adulthood especially with the situations outside the 'walls'.

A half hour later we were spread out in one of the rooms in the Takagi estate's second floor as the rain came down against the windows. My duffle bag occupying a table, and sharing it with a sizable amount of ammo for the guns that joined them on the table. The whole room reaked of number 9 solvent.

"Detective Ryuji just showed up," Saya commented looking out a rain splashed window, which probably meant he was here to see Saya's old man. They were probably going to have to coordinate (the Police remnants, and Ultranationalists) with the Yakuza to deal with the walkers that were eventually going to flood the city from the subways.

Explosives was the suggested option for closing the tunnels. We didn't know how many there were down there, and it was better to just trap them until we could do something else, and that would take ages. Best case scenario the Japanese Self Defense Force or the USAF could bomb the tunnels and get them all that way, but that looked like it would be a ways off before they could do that. There hadn't been a whole lot of good news from the wider world, and by most indications the power grid was beginning to fail world wide because plants were being abandonned. That brought us back to the Takagi plan to hold, and maintain the hydroelectric plant, which they were doing.

I wipe downed the receiver and put it aside, there wasn' much we were going to be able to do though, not personally at least. If they chose to blow the entrances it would probably buy all of us some much needed time, but there was still the chance they'd, the zombies, still manage to get out some other way later on.

Fuuma Ryuji was a detective under Rei's old man, and while he probably meant well the man had a couple of mannerisms that made me uneasy. The man drove around most times alone, which just seemed like a bad idea... add to that his 'kohai' had gotten eaten by the dead I was concerned just how stable the guy was, especially given his position in the police survivors hierarchy.

Kohta slid the retaining pin back into his AR, "Are we going to go down there?" Takashi glanced to him, and hopped off of the window sill, and started towards the door just as I was putting the mag into my Sig, and ran my hand down the rail. I was glad it was semi auto only we didn't have the spare 5.56 ammo. I'd packed for a different set of situations than what I'd been thrown into, so now in addition to the FAL Ishi had a Chinese Model 213 taken from the Police station's evidence storage. Thus far we hadn't even used the two 22lr guns that were in the bag, and for the moment it would probably stay that way, especially with the rain.

"We might as well, the cops are having their own problems." The dissent inside survivor camps had been getting worse as of late, with the rumors of a conspiracy by the government. Add to that it had gotten out that there was next to no way to evacuate the entirety of the city's survivors feasibly we were a spark a way from igniting the powder keg. Adding that Inspector Miyamoto let both his wife and daughter go around heavily armed, which was at least for me reasonable well of course there was discontent. "lets finish up here." The city was a fucking mess, and the fact the JMSDF didn't have the lift capacity, or a place to put that many people... not safely.

People were getting impatient too, understandable. People were getting angry, and anxious and a dozen other terms. I really was wishing we had ballistic vests for everyone. We didn't of course, we had a few we'd pulled off dead cops, but not enough to equip all the teams. That was basically how we'd divided off now, into three teams. Well technically two and a half was more accurate, the last team was more of a support group... though maybe if Minami's navy buddy stuck around that would change. In truth though the teams were de jure, and the rosters switched about depending on what needed to be done. We did a last check on our weapons and opened the door.

The trek down to the entry hall was quiet. It was unfortunate but the Takagi, and the Police were still at odds. The limitted Ground elements of the Self Defense Force didn't really have the resources to stay on sight, and as if that wasn't trouble they had their own civilians to watch over. In addition of course to them and the holdouts there was still the Yakuza. The mobster in charge who really hadn't said anything to anyone officially. Not that the cops really wanted to listen, not to organized crime. The self defense forces didn't have the manpower

"You know I'd really like to get a Beretta," Kohta was saying, at the look he got he amended the statement, "Well one for me," Mrs Takagi had a 32 ACP Beretta, which she carried in addition to that Skorpion, and of course the VERTEC we'd gotten from the dead cop. "I'd really like to have one personally." He shrugged, "I know its wishful thinking Japan doesn't issue Beretta to members of the self defense force." The gun nut stated as we made it down the stairs. Chances were the cops were going to avoid parting with any more guns. People had their preferences... and to be honest I missed having the option of my Glock 20... but we'd make do with what we had, and really rifles were a lot better than using pistols.

Japan's SDF was supposed to have a peak ready strength, meaning calling its reserves up, of 300 thousand personel... and Japan didn't have a large stockpile of ammunition stowed... not that the US ammo depots on post would last a protracted conflict either. That of course was probably what we were going to get into though. There was also the fact that that there probably weren't 300k personel available to be called up, well not anymore. There guns though would eventually circulate to other people... well unless they were on a sinking ship.

Fuuma was talking about reinforcing security at the school. After this past weekend I could understand. For now the promise that military would be evacuating people had placated most people at Shintoko, but there was still some unease... and by unease I meant the near lynching of someone. That kind of shit was going to get people killed for no other reason than paranoia, and I was reminded of Buffalo Springfield's For What Its Worth.

Two of the Nationalists opened the doors to one of the large rooms that were used for meetings. All the computers and electronics had been shifted to the side, replaced by movable boards. With the step up, step down transformers blown the dam could generate electricity, and it still wouldn't do us down here any good.

"The school's problems must be contained," Mr. Takagi was saying. He still wasn't carrying a gun though there were a couple of guys with M4A1 carbines standing around. "Our own supply of ammunition and weapons is also an issue." Minami when she'd gotten here had brought a Komatsu loaded with a bunch of gear from the JMSDF convoy off the coast. Their surplus of guns though meant we'd burn through the Takagi stockpile of 5.56 NATO ammo even faster. It was the reason we were avoiding using the guns Minami had brought... for now.

-scene break-


	13. Chapter 13 Burning Mess

-scene break-

I didn't really care much for the Komatsu but it was a another set of wheels. The damn thing was a pain in the ass to load, but Minami had brought it back with fuel from the Akagi task group. The inflatable boat I was a bit more dubious about, but whatever. Still the Komatsu was a pain in the ass to load, the good thing about the M1025 was the hatchback. "The MAG should be able to fit," The Komatsu had a weapon mount that accomadated a LMG mounting, but it was a different model, then again the same mount was supposed to also hold an M2. I climbed down from the turret. "Get Matsudo to look at it."It would probably help for an air powered wrench, but we could do it with a regular one.

"I thought it was worth a shot they might be different calibers but we should be able to." Kohta remarked, "if the mobs become a problem this would really help us out, or try the M1025" Yeah because nothing quite said crowd control like rolling machine gun nest. The Humvee though didn't seem to have the mounting, but we could probably still undo the bolts, and put a MAG on the M1025. "any added advantage we could get."

Ishi opened the back door to the Komatsu, stopped, and then turned one hand tugging at the sling of the FAL. Minami beat him to the announcement, "Looks like we've got trouble coming." There was a reason we tried to keep people at Kohta's house when we could sometimes it was just a few of the junior Takagi officers, or Matsudo, or Tamaru. It was amazing the way some people would go on and try and stir up trouble in crises... amazing might not have been the right word.

"It doesn't help these idiots keep talking with Shido," Kohta grunted rifling through the tool bag. In name Inspector Miyamoto may have been in charge at the school, but Shido had been causing plenty of trouble by politicking at every turn. As part of cooperation between the two groups transports ferried between the main areas. It also helped morale too, which was kind of needed given the way this mess was. Letting people move into secured housing had as well, but it also meant we ended up with obnoxious neighbors. It was probably the reason Kohta was getting testy about the situation.

Either way things were getting uncomfortable, and that was especially true for the youngest members of the Ultranationalists. Or rather the junior officers who'd been in before the end, because the Takagi had seen new recruits as result of this chaos, and that in itself had problems. Case in point on this list was Saburo, who had really only shown up at the estate shortly before the power had went out. That meant he'd caught the whole drama fest that had happened around that time. He was presently fiddling with his refit M1 Carbine just because he was nervous.

"They found a stockpile of ammo,"

I turned around, "Oh?"  
"A box of 38 Special might be someone found a police revolver," Kohta said. "It was tucked away with some other supplies, bottles with laudry detergent and gasoline."

Technically the Takagi hadn't confiscated weapons from anyone. That didn't mean they were encouraging people to have them. It just happened also that the Takagi tended to be careful on who they took on search trips. Stockpiling ammo was one thing, but you didn't use incendiary devices for much...

-scene break-

We sat up on the roof watching the morons. The Yakuza, or rather these idiots, were busy stradling their crotch rockets in the middle of the street firing full speed tec 9 machine pistols. The horde kept coming, and coming. "They're just wasting ammo by using those pieces of crap." Kohta remarked, which was ironic considering whenever we came across guns, or even other useful weapons, we'd scoop up whatever we found, and toss them into a bag. We had a rather, well semi, nice collection, it was certainly varied enough.

Speaking of collections there hadn't been anything about the stash the guys had found. "I'm really surprised your navy let you walk off with all those guns," I got that the JMSDF was understaffed because they had had a bunch of people disembarked at the time they shoved off from the docks during the emergency. Still to let Minami walk off like that, the 4x4 was one thing, and sure the boat... ah... I was going to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. The gun fire down on the road died off as the motor bikes revved up, and then sped off.

Takashi crossed his arms, "We're going to have to talk to those gangsters eventually."

"We should be planning to go to America..." Kohta remarked adjusting his AR 10, "You heard the captain they can't organize an evacuation. We'll have to do it ourselves. The SDF has Hercules transports after all." He'd been going off an on about this but it'd become more frequent since things had taken a turn at the worse. What with the elementary being a spark away from a bonfire, and the JMSDF boys having completely vanished from communications... of course there might be a non horrible reason for the latter.

That sounded all well and good, but, "I can't fly a plane and well," for what he was talking about in this instance, "either way we need at least two Hercules transports," if Kohta could fly a plane I was going to be extremely concerned... well land a plane flying a mechanically sound plane was allegedly simple... allegedly. Either way I'd still be exceedingly concerned as to why he could.

"Thats why we'll take it up with the Don." He stated. I wondered for a minute if he was going to shoot at the horde, but he let them shamble onwards after the sound of the motorcycles going across the bridge. "You've thought about it too, we'll have a better chance in America for food, ammo and weapons. Air travel is the best way." The only way really.

Minami fiddled around with tactical vest, before pulling a zippo out, "There are survivors from the air port, but I don't know if they could fly those kind of planes."

"We don't have to leave immediately, just soon." Kohta responded, and I noticed he was gritting his teeth, "the SDF was offloading the survivors they have nearby to ground forces, because something is wrong."

Shizuka's girlfriend stopped just as she was preparing to light her smoke, and voiced what we, what everyone was, were already thinking, "What did you hear? Why now?" The JMSDF captain hadn't been very forward about staying. In fact once the enclaves had been demonstrated as survivable for at least the short term he'd stopped being so concerned. There was also the fact they'd been offloading personel as well. She put the cigarette and the lighter on the edge and started fiddling with her radio.

That was the conversation in short that caused us to head back early. We didn't end up talking to the gangsters who controlled the east end districts, instead we headed back into Mr Takagi's office. He didn't know precisely what was going on, but Gato did. Minami's navy friend's news wasn't good either, but it did explain why the JMSDF has booked it last week. It also explained why the ships were offloading people, including personel when they were already short handed, into safe locations as possible.

There was a crack of a bolt action rifle discharging. Well that was a good thing at least we weren't lacking on 308... or 9 That was another thing Kohta had a point on, it'd be easier to find reloading materials in America just because of volume. Still getting the fuel, and getting over there would be an ordeal in itself. Quiet city meant you could hear the rifle shots when they were picked from quite a distance. If the Nationalist Elites went live with the M4A1 SOPMODs Minami had handed over to Mr. Takagi well we'd know it pretty quickly, because at that point everyone would know there was a problem and join in. Still with the expanding defenses, defenses similiar to what everyone else was building, we were pretty secure. The second district had probably undergone the most radical change in the last week though. Already lengths of mprovised barbwire stretched from the telephone poles, and burned out cars, and battered furniture.

Saeko leaned against her sword as we rolled through another dead intersection. Dead as in no people zombie or otherwise, really needed a new way of phrasing that. "Have you given any thought to Hirano-kun's plan?"

"If he can find two C 130, pilots, JP5, and diesel for our vehicles, sure we can go." I grunted, and if we could that'd be great. Kohta was talking about moving all our equipment. "Fuel is going to be a bitch though." I hit the brakes, as Takashi slammed on the humvee's.

He turned, and peeled down another turn, and then I saw why, and shit. "Sorry I didn't see them until now." Takashi called from the radio.

"Yeah just drive." I slotted the ASLAV into reverse, and backed up and turned, before gunning it forward. Well they were going to get out of the subway eventually, and well with the fucking gangsters making such a ruckus, and us making nearly as much with big bore diesels yeah we were the rock concert. Well looks like we were taking a detour. "Well were are we going now?"

Of course Kohta wanted to work on his plan. The navy, sorry Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, hadn't had the air lift capacity or time to really strip anything from the airport, and that was where Kohta had been wanting to go. It was connected to a service line, which was no longer in use... obviously.

I sat on top of the turrent, and adjusted the binoculars. "Whatever lets do this shit." Transit for passengers, and a line for cargo. The sooner Hirano got over that the local airport might have fuel but not the kind of plane we needed the sooner we could do something else more productive. I headed back and pulled a bag out of the back... the gun bag, and pulled my spotter's scope out. "It looks empty," I commented after a couple of minutes, before deciding fuck it why not, and turning the turrent motor on.

"Supressors?" Kohta asked double checking, what he already knew was going to be the case. I nodded, "Awesome." I didn't get it. Kohta was getting antsy to get out of his parent's place. He wanted to get out, and far. He understood his parents were never coming home, but everybody reacted differently to their own stress. Kohta was already on his third draft to his parents, about how we were leaving for America. Ishi had brought the second draft to me, after he'd stumbled across it in Kohta's room.

I hated being wrong, or made to look stupid as much as the next person. I didn't expect the airport to be anything useful for us... and well fuck me I was wrong. "The freezer for the hotel might still actually be good." Big old sealed industrial freezers could seriously hold temperature, so maybe and the hotel probably had sprung for the good ones. The office too might even be a decent place to hold, we could stick people in the Hotel... not somewhere though we'd want to be if a hurricane came, but it was a decent place... and technically we had the weather channel. The downside was obviously no power, and I wasn't sure about the water... this place might have been connected to the dam for both... probably was. "We're not clearing this by ourselves Kohta. I'm going to go call Shimada, and Tamaru out here." We could use another pair of eyes if nothing else... and chains. "lets go check doors." If we were lucky we could barricade up in the hotel, and stay here the night, and start a full shift in the morning we might be done by the end of next week. I shifted my rifle around the area, there were some zed still wandering around. The SDF had probably been prioritizing evacuation over search and destroy.

Minami nodded, and radio-ed it in and leaned back, "We don't really need two C130s do we?" She asked a bit critically.

"Well not really, but we could do with one carrying Fuel," but we could probably try and make do with out, diesel might not be that hard to find, that and we'd need an actual loadmaster to stow a fuel truck on a Hercules. Hell we could just take one plane, but leaving the vehicles was a risky option.

-scene break-

Mr. Takagi both applauded the initiative, particularly because of the food still frozen in the industrial freezer, and warned of spreading too thin. He had a point on both counts. He'd spared a handful of people to help us clean up the zombies, but with the situation they'd only been available for a day. In exchange they'd taken one of the fuel trucks, and an ambulance, and probably were going to pick over some of the food. Of course they needed that, and we needed to figure out what to do with the frozen food anyway. Once you opened an industrial freezer well the temperature had already been rising even insulated like it had been.

We were busy moving stuff up the stairs. While not quite as homey feeling as Kohta's house, "This provides us with significantly better operational security given the disturbances at the estate," Kohta remarked survey the breadth of the area with the binoculars he had in his hands. "Now we should see about finding the back up generator from the map in the security office its."

"Come on," Minami was way ahead of him, after all she had worked shifts here. "We locked it up after turning it off when we left, but it still had fuel." Takashi was on her heels with his shotgun ready. Chances were the generator was fine, and that it was still safe from whatever dead remained on the island. Saeko none the less went with them.

I set the bin full of clothes down, and looked over the black top. Offshore airport... an artificial island it was impressive... and we needed to make sure it was clear of the dead. We were pretty sure it was, but with only a handful of people it was time consuming.

Shimada set another bin down, this one filled with nails for the nail gun Kohta had used at the very start of this mess. "We don't need to worry about most these buildings, as long as we get all the dead. Be nice to get power running though, but what about people from the estate?"

"Not immediately going to be a concern," Maybe not even in the short term, not after last nights drama. The stress was getting to people, and paranoia was getting to be a problem. "They'll probably stay away, but how long is the question." The refugees at the estate were dividing into factions, and some of them were loud, but even the loudest ones didn't, shouldn't, have anything more than knives. The Takagi had just gotten a fresh infusion of guns courtesy of Minami, which was more than the police could boast. It was just luck on that though. Minami had been coming to look for Shizuka, and her friend had been her only priority. It was just a fact, but it had consequences.

So the refugees were getting restless, there hadn't been another, visible, threat to the estate like what had happened on the day the nukes had gone off. It didn't matter their were human threats lurking about the closest being roving psycho bands. The police did have guns, but they were staying holed up behind their barricades, while the Ultranationalists took control of the dam. The dam that had supplied power to the city, power that wasn't back on. Most people didn't want to hear excuses either on why the power didn't work. So we were stuck listening to outrageous indignant complaints, and it could be said the ultranationalists were getting tired of it... and they wouldn't abandon the estate without a fight. For today we could only prepare our own place to sleep. About an hour later were sitting around helping ourselves to freshly prepared food, which we were eating in the main terminal. Kohta had apparently been grilling Minami about where the JMSDF had relocated the survivors from the airport.

Saya stamped a foot growing obviously impatient, "With the SDF hunkered down there is nothing we can do, and they're just sitting there." She grunted angrily to Kohta.

The sky was gray, dark gray, the winter sky was tending towards gray most days. Today though it looked like it would probably rain, possibly even through the night. Luckily we probably wouldn't start getting snow for a couple weeks, but the temperature was probably going to start dropping. It was for that reason we'd started bringing insulation material; blankets and what not.

-scene break-

The airport made a nice secondary hidey hole, but it didn't do shit to deal with the situation at the fucking elementary... and there was still no sign of the Maritime SDF. We had a pretty fucking good idea why too now. I ate another oreo, and listened to the ruckus down the hall. Minami, and Kohta were heading up the detail at the airport a couple of the Takagi junior officers were over there with them, but Mr. Takagi didn't have much manpower to spare... Not after the riot this morning here. I stayed were I was as yet another crash echoed down the hall. The people who were going with them were strictly volunteers who were free.

People were throwing shit... again. Ishi wasn't so calm.. if the fact he'd pulled the flap open on his holster was any indication. "What should we do?"  
"Hope Takashi gets done with this shit soon, well him and Rei." Mrs. Miyamoto was awesome, but she wasn't going to leave her husband in this mess. "Personally I think we should throw Rei in the back seat and drive, before she shoots Shidou." I was actually really glad Rei hadn't taken one of the handguns, since she spent most of her time here. I leaned against the wall, geez I needed another shower I smelled like sweat, grease and cordite. The smell told people what you did, even if you weren't blatantly carrying, which I was though I'd swapped jackets for the leather one I'd brought along in my bag, which helped a bit covering the tactical vest, and goodies. The jacket didn't do much for concealing the MP5 on its three point sling, and even less for the Mk14. That was one of major things about the scenario that'd gotten me in this mess. Vehicle, carrying ammo within for two weapons, and five duffle bag worth of gear plus carried kit... and I was only one person. Packed gear for an enviroment i'd been used to, and now was stuck here.

Hirano adjusted the M4 he'd gotten from Minami days ago. He was holding up pretty well for someone who didn't look... particularly atheletic. Kohta had put it as being able to control our own fates its why were stockpiling weapons on our own. It was osmething made easier because we had secure space and vehicles. "We've got to go down there this is worse than at the Takagi estate situation." From the shouting he was right, and that stopped for a split second from the crack of a bolt action rifle. "That was a Howa."

"Probably so," I responded as we started pushing through the crowded hallway. They'd started pulling desks out of upper floor class rooms to take to the ground floor to barricade those windows for extra security so it was a bit of a tight fit. On top of the junk there were plenty of people, but most stuck to the class rooms either the ones for congregating or the ones with the bedrolls during rainy days. "Lets go find Takashi and Rei." Shintoko Third was a large multi story elementary with the same kind of sliding front entrace the Takagi's had. The problem though was the chain link fence with trees and shruberry around it in my mind. The Takagi (Estate) walls were solid, but the school had had no reason for theirs to be.

Unlike the grand ball room steps of the estate the stairs of the school were a lot more utilitarian well discounting the colorful posters the kids had been putting up. There had been people who were starting to get confrontational, which could potentially be blamed on Shidou, but given the situation probably had something to do with individual irritation sparking initiative. Whatever bravado seemed to dry up when gunshots tended to start, but whether that was going to last remained to be seen.

I didn't catch whatever was said to Takashi but judging this crowd by their looks it was probably the same bullshit some of the refugees had thrown at Saya at the Takagi estate last week after the Don had decided to demonstrate his 'friendship' to that infected guy. All I did no was it was getting under his skin, and they were circling. Saya's dad was an actual authority figure, Takashi's mom was just a teacher. This was just the kind of thing that was the new normal.

As a general rule when under stress people's judgment and impulse control diminish. This is true in almost all situations even training doesn't fully alleviate the effects of stress. People acted according to factors, and stress played a major role in changing behavior. This was basic stuff... for example the whole Rei being pissed off and threatening to kill Shidou in the middle of public thing, that was stress screwing with impulse control, it was kind of natural. It was also the last thing we needed a repeat of. Just as in this case Takashi pulling the glock out, and causing an incident, even an accidental discharge...

We didn't need this kind of drama. We certainly didn't need to be the spark that set this kindling into a blaze. Of course by this point the shouting had gotten the police to come by, which under any other circumstances, we probably would have been the ones getting blamed. Well as Kohta was demonstrating we still were free to glare at the bastard, though in another situation Kohta might have gotten told off for that, except that he was on the stair case with an assault rifle in his hands. If that wasn't enough Ishi had the FAL, and well so on and so forth. On the other hand it might not be enough because they were really getting under Takashi's skin.

I heard a crash and then Shimada came busting through the door bleeding from the scalp. "We gotta go, now." He declared waving the 38 revolver in a distinctly unsafe fashion. That was when I caught the sent of the burning.

It was about that time I noticed the man in the suit who'd been standing beside Shidou. He had to have been a cop. He wore the same kind of suit, but what caught the attention was him pulling Shidou along. Everybody smelled the petrol smoke, which well you basically shout fire in a crowded theater you knew what you were getting. Shidou's cop buddy was already pulling him towards the door, despite the other man's protests. Getting out into the yard was a pain, and the fire was outside, which meant pushing through some people who decided they wanted to go back inside after they realized that.

Shimada did some absurd half run 'tactical' check as we booked it as opposed to just running straight or trying to just watch the rear. Tamaru was already slotted behind the wheel with the glock out, but I didn't see any spent shell casings, which was a good thing. "Shimada hold up," He slid to a halt, and I looked at him. Kohta stopped and shouldered the M4 watching the rear, and more to the point the rioters. "What happened?"

"We, were bringing rice, and wheat. You know, from the docks," He stopped to rub his head. I had known that they were supposed to be bringing food back from the docks, "and somebody threw a firebomb," Most likely a molotov, like had been found, "and then some rocks." He started to sway to the side, well that didn't explain the gun shot earlier but that could have been a lone zombie.

I looked up at the hideous orange flatbed, and Tamaru, "You can drive this right?"

"Yeah!" He called down.

Takashi grabbed my sleeve, "We can't leave. We need to find Rei, and my mom."

"Actually I think leaving would be a good idea," Shidou commented straightening his jacket, "as you can see things are getting very chaotic here Takashi-kun." Takashi's hand squeezed his sling as he glared at the teacher.

Kohta grit his teeth, "Ishi watch the back, if they get to close we're going to have to leave fast." He eyed the guy with Shido.

"We're all adrift in this chaotic sea together. All of us, including the Self Defense Force." He commented gesturing to the crowds, "This fine gentleman was just bringing food and was attacked by the paniced people. We must work together if we're to get where we wish to get to."

After helping Shimada get into the cab of the flatbed, and making sure they knew where we were parked we settled into the still half loaded bed. In hindsight Tamaru was not the best at driving under normal situations, but he could get around, but it still left us having to listen to whatever scheme Shidou was trying to orchestrate while people rioted.

Inspector Miyamoto was already having the riot police form up, complete with their shields and batons to try and disperse people. They were even cranking the fire truck up that they had driven back from the bridge. Kohta handed me his set of binoculars, "Rei's up there with the prefectural sharp shooters." She did have the M1A, and well with as much of a ruckus as this shit was making every corpse in the area would be coming on.

I watched some guy toss another molotov cocktail at the mass of riot police... at least they had shields though, which was better than nothing. I watched the mess... and then back to Shidou, and then to Takashi. "Hey Takashi what happened back there?"

-scene break-


End file.
